The Dark Knight is by far the finest cinema experience I’ve had in the last few years. It’s a rich, dark, complex and compelling crime saga told so brilliantly that you’ll have to remind yourself that it’s based on a comic book character who runs around in a cape and cowl. The film surpasses it’s predecessor on almost every level. A lot has been said about the performances but what struck me the most was the solid writing. The screenplay is outstanding and borrows heavily from The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns with lines that never seem forced and are sure to elicit some sort of debate on vigilantism and surveillance.

Every successful comic book film has to have unforgettable villains and TDK delivers there. Heath Ledger’s Joker is a maniac – an absolute that runs rampant through Gotham. He has no motives and no back story; he simply refers to himself as an ‘agent of chaos’. Ledger’s performance can hardly be called a performance; it’s more or less free form improv. I cannot imagine any other actor inhabiting a character that psychotic. It will go down in history as iconic. Period. Harvey Dent‘s character arc is fantastically realized too. Dent is the white knight as opposed to the morally ambiguous Batman; a man Bruce Wayne wishes he was but cannot be. Dent’s transformation into Harvey Two-Face…well, the less said, the better.

Despite taking comic book liberties, the film explores serious themes; mostly dwellings on the nature of heroism and our innate need for heroes. Not once do you feel like it aspires to be something that talks down to you. For once, a comic book film takes itself and the audience seriously and treads that fine line between pulp art and reality.

Sadly, The Dark Knight does have flaws that keep it away from masterpiece territory. The James Gordon arc felt a bit forced at times and the sequence at the beginning with the copycat Bat-men felt like it belonged in a different movie altogether. However, at the end of the day, this is fantastic and mind-blowingly brilliant pop art – a film that raises the bar so high that it’s next to impossible to follow it up with something this good.

9.5/10

(Oh and I have tickets to a double-bill screening of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight for this Sunday. Be jealous.)

Heath Ledger (1979-2008)

28 years. Shit. Watching The Dark Knight will be so very surreal now.

Christopher Nolan’s follow up to the brilliant Batman Begins, The Dark Knight is well over half a year away from hitting the cinemas but the first trailer (apart from the teaser) made it’s way online via one of the zillion viral sites promoting the film. The last time I watched a trailer so many times was over 3 years back when the first film was released.

The rusty brown feel of the first film has been replaced by a metallic blue hue, accentuating the cold and menacing tone what with the nemesis being nothing less that Batman’s biggest foe, The Joker. The trailer does give a little too much away (I would have preferred if they downplayed the Joker a bit before the film came out) and does give far too much importance to the explosions and action scenes but fans will be blown away by Heath Ledger’s performance (from the two minutes we get to see) as The Joker…creepy and throughly maniacal. This could very well be every fan’s ultimate wet dream.

Harvey Dent is conspicuously absent from the trailer as is Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow…here’s hoping it’s worth the wait. In Nolan we trust.

Go here for the trailer in all it’s glory or feast your eyes on the embedded vid below.