IMDB Top 250 - Day 4: #10 - The Dark Knight
Image taken from Comingsoon.net.
Sooo, The Dark Knight. What is there to really be said about this movie other than it's probably the greatest superhero film ever made. Christopher Nolan continues his revamp of the Batman movie franchise by giving us one of the most mature and serious takes on both Batman and his arch-nemesis the Joker in recent memory. Want to know how I got these SPOILERS?
Image taken from The Williams Club.
The Dark Knight continues the story started in Batman Begins. The movie opens with five men dressed as clowns robbing a mob bank, with each one slowly getting killed by other members of the party until only two are left when one is flattened by a school bus driven by a third who is then killed. The last one left is revealed to be The Joker (Heath Ledger).
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and Batman (Christian Bale) debate on whether to include Gotham's new District Attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), in their plans to take on Gotham's mob, now led by Sal Maroni (Eric Roberts). After some convincing, Dent commissions search warrants on several mob banks. A Chinese mafia accountant by the name of Lau (I'd give you the actor, but Wikipedia fails me) takes the liberty of moving the mob's cash before he's asked to do so, hiding behind the fact that the Chinese won't extradite a national and hide from Dent's jurisdiction. The Joker makes his reappearance, knowing that while Dent has a jurisdiction, Batman does not and will come after Lau to make him squeal. The Joker than asks for half of the mob's money in order to take out Batman before he is chased out by the mob. Batman goes to Hong Kong and captures Lau and the mob turns to the Joker.
The Joker then begins killing people, trying to pressure Batman into revealing who he is. A judge, the current police commissioner, and Lieutenant Gordon are all killed, while an attempt is made on Dent's life by the Joker. Eventually, Batman decides to turn himself in, but Dent decides to take the fall and is transported to prison. On the way, the Joker makes another attempt on Dent's life, only to be saved by Batman and the Joker is carted off for questioning by a not-quite-dead-yet Gordon, who is promoted by Commissioner.
However, Harvey Dent and his girlfriend, Bruce Wayne's childhood friend Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), are taken to separate warehouses by moles in the Gotham Police Department. Batman questions the Joker, who tells them exactly where they are, but warns them that they'll have to choose which to save. Rachel dies while Harvey is saved, but comes out of it badly burned. One of Bruce Wayne's accountants believes that he has figured out the identity of Batman and is about to go on air with the information when the Joker threatens to blow up a hospital if someone does not kill the accountant within the hour. Due to much protection on the part of the Gotham Police and Bruce Wayne, the accountant is not hurt and the patients of Gotham General are taken to safety before the building is blown up, with the exception of Harvey Dent, who has been released by the Joker, and a single bus of patients and doctors. Dent, now horribly disfigured and calling himself Two-Face, goes after the man who took him to the warehouse and asks who took Rachel, but he doesn't know and is killed. Dent tries Maroni next, who tells him the name of the person who took her to her warehouse. While Dent does not directly kill Maroni, he does kill the driver, causing the car to flip over and kill Maroni.
Batman asks Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) to help him track the Joker via use of a giant sonar system that uses every phone in Gotham City. Lucius agrees, but resigns, stating that as long as the system stays at Wayne Enterprises, he won't be. Fox eventually finds the Joker after he hijacks two ferries leaving Gotham, one filled with civilians and the other with criminals Dent put away. The Joker has rigged both to explode, with the detonator for one boat on the opposite boat (A has the detonator for B and vice-versa). The Joker promises that as long as one of the boats blows up, he'll let the other boat go free, otherwise he'll blow them both up at midnight. Batman storms the building where the Joker is with Gordon giving him two minutes before he sends in the SWAT team. Batman finds and battles the Joker, finally defeating him after neither ferry blows up. Batman then learns that Commissioner has left to find his family, which has been taken by Dent.
Gordon arrives for Dent to start threatening his family, eventually telling Gordon to lie to his son and tell him that everything is going to be okay. Batman comes in and saves Gordon's son, but Dent falls from some scaffolding and dies. Batman then tells Gordon that he (Batman) will act as a scapegoat for Harvey's crimes and that Gordon will now have to hunt him. As Fox types in his name to destroy the sonar machine, Batman runs, knowing that Gordon and the Gotham Police will have to try and catch him in earnest now.
Image taken from The Dark Knight Trailer.
I love this movie. Everything in it relates to something else. You notice how the summary for this movie is six paragraphs? That's because there are little to no superfluous scenes and the two and a half hour runtime feels like absolutely nothing. It is well put together and well acted, with special props going to Ledger, who won a posthumous Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. This movie is something special and was done with great care on everyone's part and it shows, even if the fight scenes are absolutely terrible. And the dialogue can be rather high-end and unnatural from time to time (Alfred is especially prone to this). But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter, because everything good about this film is excellent and greatly overshadows whatever faults the film may have.
Next time: Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman seek redemption.