The
Dark Knight
2008
Director: The inimitable Christopher
Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger,
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Aaron Eckhardt
Yes,
I love Christopher Nolan. I think the
man has managed to find a way to produce intense, dramatic, and intellectually
thought-provoking films within the current Hollywood system, all while still
making movies with mass appeal. The
Dark Knight is, perhaps, his best example of this.
The
second in Nolan’s Batman trilogy, following 2005’s Batman Begins, we see
Bruce Wayne/Batman (Bale) in full crime-fighting mode. This time, though, he’s up against a new kind
of enemy – the Joker (Ledger), a mad criminal who follows no rules and worships
no false idols. The Joker gets under
Batman’s skin most when he starts going after Gotham’s new white knight,
district attorney Harvey Dent (Eckhardt), a man so idealistic that Bruce Wayne
can’t help but idolize him, and Dent’s girlfriend Rachel (Gyllenhaal), who just
so happens to be the love of Wayne’s life.
I’m
not really a huge superhero movie fan.
Sure, they are a diverting couple of hours at the cineplex, but I find
most to be middling at best, and that’s what I think about the ones I like. When I heard that a new Batman movie was
coming out (Batman Begins) I rolled my eyes in recollection of the
putrescence that is Batman and Robin. I
needed convincing from multiple people that this new Batman film was unlike
others, and eventually, after being coerced into watching it, I agreed. I actually liked Batman Begins! I actually think it’s a good movie! Shocking!
By the time its sequel came out, I had gotten to know Christopher Nolan
more as a director, I had started to appreciate his body of work as a whole,
and I was looking forward to it.
