Movie Review: The Dark Knight

By Christopher Nolan 

4 Stars 

Batman is no longer a comic book. The Dark Knight (2008), directed by Christopher Nolan, is a haunting picture that transcends its origins to become an enthralling tragedy. It develops characters that we start to care about. That's due to the performances, the direction, the screenplay, and the overall production's exceptional technical quality. This film, and to a lesser extent Iron Man, expanded the boundaries of the "comic-book movie." The plot revolves around the Joker's attempts to embarrass the forces of good and disclose Batman's secret identity, exposing him as a pretender and a fraud. He has Gordon and Dent on his list of targets, and he has devised nasty pranks to exploit Bruce Wayne's absence to his once-loved Assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and Harvey Dent's new love. Because the Joker is unaware of Batman's identity, the tricks are more severe than he knows. Heath Ledger has a lot of speech in the film, and a lot of it isn't the normal jabs and jests: it's more psychologically sophisticated, presenting the issues he's created and explaining his motives for them. Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan (who originally collaborated on Memento) wrote a screenplay with more depth and poetry than we would have expected. Overall, I think The Dark Knight is a terrific Batman film that I should see more of; thus, I give it a 9/10.   

Reviewed by Yusuf 

View in Library Catalogue: Blu-ray Disc