Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008) Movie Review

Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman, Monique Curnen, Chin Han, Nestor Carbonell, Eric Roberts, Cillian Murphy, Anthony Michael Hall
Director: Christopher Nolan
Genres: Action | Crime | Drama | Thriller
Runtime: 152 min
Release Date: 18 July, 2008
Collections: $1,001,921,825 (worldwide)

The Dark Knight is the sequel to Christopher Nolan’s 2005 critical hit, Batman Begins. The movie though was underrated. My expectations for The Dark Knight were high. In the end, I wasn’t thwarted.  Batman and Gordon find alliance with a newly appointed DA Harvey Dent to stop a vicious killer with a warped sense of humor known only as The Joker, a threat to both the good, and the evil of Gotham City.

Heath Ledgers performance was absolutely legendary and he completely transformed himself into the Joker and he was utterly amazing, he had some brilliant lines and he played the Joker so well.  Christian was also extremely good and knew that it was a movie for the Joker (as he said himself in an interview). Garry Oldman once again is outstanding as Commissioner Gordon, to me; he feels like a lead character and is the closest to being Batman’s partner. Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) makes a little cameo in the opening, following where he left of in “Batman Begins”. Some may be disappointed that he’s only in the movie for 5 minutes, but was happy when Batman takes him down. The other supporting actors played their parts well also. Chris knew how to pick the correct actors for each part.

Scenes I liked:

• Gotham’s Bank Robbery
• Batman – Joker Interrogation Scene
• Batman taking the Garbage van with Tumbler
• The BATPOD bursting out of Bat Tumbler
• The sequence of flipping TRUCK with BATPOD (BATPOD horizontal wheel slide)
• Return of Gordon
• Gotham’s General Hospital scene
• Heath Ledger aka. Joker’s One-Liners

The storyline was good, it was fast moving. Long but you did not realize it because it was nonstop action packed fun. The problem is that this film comes with an incredible amount of hype and one is kind of expecting it to deliver something really special. In this it fails. Oh, at 152 minutes, it is also way too long. The movie is a little slow at first, but it picks up pace very quickly and the last fifteen minutes are just amazing.

Director Christopher Nolan really knew how to impersonate these characters and envelope on how effective a comic book movie can be. He really is one of the greatest writers – directors in force right now and has done some first-class films. The true strength of Christopher Nolan is that he writes real stories with big concepts, some terrific dialog, conversations and character interaction.

One of Nolan’s major decisions was to shoot parts of the film in IMAX.  He considers the format to be the highest quality film and went on to use the large, loud cameras for six major sequences including the opening heist sequence.  Because of the cameras noise, the scene involved heavy audio work for dialogue scenes. The action and fighting scenes in this movie are done very well and on top of that, the dialogue is exceptionally sharp and crisp. The conversations between Batman and The Joker. Their chemistry is outstanding. Hans Zimmer’s score was just as great as ever and really drew me into the action. The dark Knight was a great movie and brought back the element of story back into film. Cinematography in this movie is breath taking, the camera makes some outstanding.

Survi Verdict: The Dark Knight delivers everything a fan of Batman Begins could have hoped for. There is lots of great action and plenty of intensity, there’s a story that never became directionless, and there’s some great acting in fascinating roles. I have seen the movie couple times in IMAX that is how good it is. If there is one person out there who has not seen this movie, you are missing out. It is a must see. If Nolan and company turn out THE DARK KNIGHT RISES this good, it’ll be a first in the history of trilogies.

Theatrical Trailer: