The Dark Knight

I don't usually post film reviews on here (apart from that pervy one about 300 below), as I don't feel that I am at all qualified to influence anyone on what they should or shouldn't watch, but having just seen The Dark Knight, I'm feeling the need to comment on it. So here we go...

Hmmm. I was so ridiculously excited about this that I may have built up some absurd ideal in my brain which it was never going to live up to, but I was still slightly nonplussed by it.
The story goes that Batman hopes to give up the superhero gig and hand over his obligations to DA Harvey Dent, who also happens to be dating love-of-his-life Rachel (thankfully no longer played by the piece of wood which is Katie Holmes). The arrival of The Joker forces Batman to question all that he stands for… There’s also a slightly convoluted story about mob bosses which carries on from Batman Begins but I have to admit to having got a bit confused in places there (thankfully unravelled over a glass of wine in the pub post-mortem).
Don’t get me wrong, I will always be happy to pay to see Christian Bale in a rubber (sorry Kevlar) suit in glorious technicolour (okay, drained out dreary Gotham-colour) but by the end of the film his twenty-a-day Batman voice was starting to grate. It feels like he’s missing for large chunks of it and when he was on screen I just kept thinking “bring back the Joker”. Perhaps if Bale had got his top off a few more times I would have been more excited by his performance—unfortunately the several bare torso shots of Batman Begins were sadly missing.
Aaron Eckhart puts in a great performance as the new DA on the block, however his transformation from white knight (geddit?) (and perhaps look away here if you don’t want to know anything about the plot) into deformed psychotic is rather too quick for my liking. I also felt that he was somewhat wasted as a villain when you have Heath Ledger acting everyone else off the screen. This is totally Heath Ledger’s film—there’s not many actors who could manage to still look like a sinister master-criminal whilst wearing a red wig, nurse’s uniform and a badge reading “Matilda” (the name of Ledger’s daughter, fact-fans). From the minute he makes his entrance—and boy does he make an entrance, he takes over the whole screen. I was concerned that Ledger’s untimely demise would have coloured the reviews I’d read of his performance but that wasn’t the case. He is almost completely unrecognisable as the Joker and the lack of any tangible back story means that he is literally chaos personified. Or, as Alfred puts it “Some men just want to watch the world burn” (talking of Alfred they do make Michael Caine use the word “bloody” an awful lot—though luckily not in the same sentence as “doors” or “off”).
A bit part for Mandy from Hollyoaks was almost enough to make me not want to go. Thankfully I did blink and miss her.
My verdict is that Ledger’s performance alone is worth the extortionate cost of the cinema (not to mention the popcorn—4 quid?!?!).
It’s also bloody long, so take a cushion.