In a few words: astonishing and incredible.

Movie Poster from Rotten Tomatoes

Rarely can we say these days that we found a movie so well crafted, well acted and well written.  I never anticipated actually saying this about a “superhero” franchise film either?!  If you’ve seen Iron Man this year, I thought, “Heh.  Hollywood is actually kicking the superhero genre up a notch in quality.”  Friday night though, we opted to go see The Dark Knight (due to a crazy weekend scheduled, we thought we’d probably end up seeing it on Sunday.  I was looking forward to it, but I had some mild concerns about the shadow cast by Heath Ledger and was hoping that I wouldn’t think about what happened to him more than being engrossed in the film in total.  I was worried, that like many curses, a sequel would be less than wonderful (excusing both the Empire Strikes Back, Kill Bill 2 and Spiderman 2 of course), leading us to feel let down.   The movie started…and we were riveted…the entire time.

I know that many have seen the film this weekend, and I’m going to do my best not to spoil a lot of it for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but in our opinion…this film is incredible and somewhat overshadows the first “Batman: The Beginning”, in all the right ways.  ALL of them.  First of all, if they ever gave an Oscar for best “ensemble cast” this should win it…look at who we get for our price of admission:

• Gary Oldman (who’s just riveting as an actor, my favorite role was him in LEON: The Professional),
• Christian Bale (who’s really good as Batman/Bruce Wayne, and I heard he’s good in American Psycho),
• Maggie Gyllenhaal (who thankfully replaced Katie Holmes, no offense, just a better actress),
• Morgan Freeman (who is the ONLY man who could play RED in Shawshank Redemption),
• Michael Caine (I mean, elder statesman of film, come on now),
• Aaron Eckhart (I don’t have much experience with his acting, but he IS Harvey Dent in this film),
• and of course Heath Ledger.

I’m not a death praiser.  I don’t just give someone credit because I feel bad that they’ve passed beyond.  I have no real opinion on Heath Ledger other than he was good in Brokeback Mountain (which I finally saw after not really wanting to see it not because of the whole “GaY” thing which every narrow minded person I seemed to meet thought was the reason I didn’t see it…the real reason?  I don’t like Cowboys.).  So, going into this, I had no real opinion on Mr. Ledger’s acting chops.  Walking away, we both feel that he NEEDS to posthumously receive an Oscar nomination for this role.  He is everything the sadist Joker should be.  He performs the role with complete abandon, so much so that you never think about the Joker actually being “Heath Ledger”.  We’ve finally been given a true superhero-villain…a man lacking in such morality and loving of so much chaos that it’s a masterful portrait of terror.  Thankfully the character also has that dark-humor edge that is necessary.  Goodness.

If we did have 2 complaints, these were it:

1) You sometimes can’t understand what Christian Bale is saying when he uses his “Batman Voice”.  I know you’re going for edgy-mysterious, but you sound more like a asthmatic man managing to recite a sollioquy through a trachea hole.  Sorry, I understand it’s part of his “Batman Mistique”, but if the criminal can’t understand his threat/promise, what good is it.  Articulate please.

2) Some of the action sequences were so TIGHTLY close-up that you couldn’t really get a handle on what was going on in the scene.

Other than those two unhappy-points, The Jim, The Dotsons and I couldn’t stop talking about how good this film was at dinner directly afterwards.  It’s DARK, it’s filled with very unexpected twists and really GREAT (not cheesy), effects.  It is, in our opinion what a franchise like Batman/The Dark Knight deserves.  A true view of a superhero who is just a man, troubled and conflicted frequently, with some of the best gadgets in town and a sense of true honor.  I can only hope that the next installment, if there is one, can find a villain as quality as the one/s portrayed in this film.

**** out of 4.