The Dark Knight

So I saw a post by Gaz that reminded me I hadn't put up my thoughts on The Dark Knight. It's the followup to Batman Begins, which itself was a reboot of the Batman franchise and very well done and well received. Since almost all the same players are back for The Dark Knight (with the glaring exception of Katie Holmes' role being recast) it's no big surprise this one comes off very polished and well done also. This movie has received a lot of hype and it's made an absolute ton of cash. Oh yea, and it's got that Heath Ledger fellow in it.

I know most people are going to be surprised this wasn't something I went to see in the theaters. And I admit I would have thought this is exactly the type of movie I that would get me into a theater, but for some reason I never seemed to get around to seeing it. So getting to this on DVD after all the hoopla of the movie in the theaters and how much hype it had received I was expecting to be a bit disappointed. I mean how could it be *that* good. But I ended up being really impressed. I was a bit skeptical at the start of the movie. It starts off with a bank heist, which is your introduction to the Joker. Heath's portrayal of the Joker in this film is force unto itself. Joker's magic pencil trick is probably worth the price of admission alone. Frankly I didn't think there was a way to pull off the whole psychotic clown as an evil arch-nemesis, but he manages to do it in spades. Now having said that, I think you have to ignore the fact that the Joker must have about a 1,000 contingency plans in place, since he always seems to be one step ahead of everything throughout the movie. Now as you're in the moment watching the movie you don't really think about the logic of it the Joker's plans at any given time, so it doesn't really distract from the movie itself.

The movie is a bit on the long side, clocking in at two hours and thirty minutes. I remember I started watching this at close to midnight fully expecting to take a break halfway through and pick it up the next night, but at some point stopping ceased to be an option and I ended up watching the whole thing in that one sitting (which made for a really painful following day at work). For the most part you don't really feel like the movie is too long, right up until close to the end where it starts to feel a bit like things are being dragged out (either that or it was getting really late and I just wanted to go bed, probably some from column A, some from column B if I had to guess). I was a bit disappointed near the end with the technology trick Batman uses. And I know, he's already got the high tech of the car, the suit, the bike, etc, but somehow him using tech at that level felt like a cheat. Plus the introduction of use of that tech is part of what makes the movie a bit longer than I felt it needed to be.

All this and I didn't even mention of the other major plot point of Aaron Eckhart playing the role of Harvey Dent (and anyone who knows the Batman mythos knows what happens to Harvey Dent). I was a bit surprised they felt the need to pull that trigger in this movie though. He gets overshadowed for the most part, but his story is really important to the ending. I don't really want to discuss the stuff at the end of the movie, since that would be spoiling for anyone that hasn't seen it. But I really liked the way it was ended and how things got played out. Overall a really good movie. And I can't wait to see what these guys have in store for the next installment.