ViewGuide

Created Jul 28, 2008 07:04AM PST • Edited Jul 28, 2008 07:04AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Perfect 5.0

   A truly fantastic and engaging movie, “The Dark Knight” lived up to and exceeded the hype, fuss and intense interest that has surrounded it. It’s very doubtful that a comic-book film will ever top this, and yet throughout you’re not even considering that it’s a superhero film; it’s that good. The standouts are Bale, Ledger, Eckhart and Oldman, all actors at the top of their game and all proving that even a movie about a rich man fighting crime in a batsuit can be a masterclass in filmmaking, plot, action and performance.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   It’s class across the board here…the main and supporting cast is full of heavyweights, and they make the film much, much more than a Batman movie. It’s a crime drama with the best of the best playing out the roles. Maggie Gyllenhall loses out by being the single female character, but she does however mop the floor with Katie Holmes!

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

   People will go on and on about Ledger here, and so they should. He steals the film whenever he’s onscreen, and you miss him when he’s not. But Bale, Oldman and Eckhart more than hold their own, the latter two actors getting meatier and more interesting roles than you’d think, and Bale is the forgotten man here; portraying the idealistic hero who simply cannot do anything right, despite his efforts to clean up the city and have a normal life.

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

   Gyllenhall is in an unfortunate position being the lead female, but she is a great actress, and her Rachel Dawes is one who looks back to her past with Wayne, and forward to the future with Dent, and conveys a conflicted and confused woman very well.

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

   There are some great supporting actors here, but Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine perhaps stand out over the rest, simply because they’re playing SUPPORTING ROLES, and yet we have two incredibly well-known and talented older actors. They ground the storyline, and provide hope and a moral compass to Bale’s Bruce Wayne, showing the class and intelligence with which Nolan has picked a supporting cast.

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    The film looks, sounds and feels epic. Using Chicago as a stand-in for Gotham was a very good idea – you really get a feel for the place, and so the action appears more grounded and more real. Nolan knows how to direct action, but more importantly he knows how to direct drama, tension and conversations, and these scenes are the beating heart of the film.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

    Christopher Nolan has consistently stepped up his directing from Memento (which is better than some directors will ever achieve), and in this film shows that he is one of the best directors in film right now. What he achieves is not only a real hold on the story, but also an eye for action and a really strong hold on the character-focused scenes. It strikes a chord with you when you remember not just the action, but the intense one-on-one dialogues between Ledger, Bale and others, because Nolan is that much better at portraying real characterisation than many, many other directors ever could be.

12. Play Great 4.0

    There is so much that is said that sticks with you after, and nearly all is from the mouth of the Joker. Ledger’s reading of the lines is so spot-on, you cannot imagine anyone else saying it with such conviction. There is precious little humour, but with such a serious storyline you wouldn’t expect that.

13. Music Really Great 4.5

    With Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard composing, you know that this film would have a special soundtrack. If only every big movie had collaborations between composers(John Williams and Howard Shore for the Hobbit for example!). The theme for Ledger’s Joker is so, so bizarre, but it achieves the same as the character it represents; it cuts through, it jarrs and it makes for an uncomfortable experience, but you can’t not listen to it. The Batman theme is understated, but ever-present, and this is another strength here; we don’t have a Superman or Spider-Man theme; rather, the film speaks for itself, and the music is but a hint behind the action.

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Chicago seems to have been taken over by the production here; how did they manage to get so much access to so many areas? No matter; it grounds the film in realism, and allows for the audience to imagine what the effects of such a freak as the Joker would be on a real city. The stunts and action are as real as can be, and in particular acclaim must be given to the scenes containing the flipped 18-wheeler and the exploding hospital; because they are REAL!

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.8

    The film is dark in subject and depiction, but its rating here in the UK (12A) is more than appropriate, and I don’t think it needs an R (or 15) rating at all. It’s up to parents whether they think their child can handle it, and I think that it’s a film that even 10 year old children could easily watch.

17. Sex Titillating 1.8

18. Violence Fierce 1.8

    Batman and the Joker are vicious in their beatings and fighting, but the one part that actually made me cringe was a mobster’s fall to pavement, and only because I could empathise with the partiuclar injury he had sustained!

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

21. Reality

    Glib 1.9

    The funny thing about these movies is that they portray something that seems so ridiculous as so real; and as such, it’s not that far away from realism, but just enough to suggest that it could never happen. However, the actions of the Joker eerily echo those of the many terrorist groups that are active today, and many of the ways in which this is depicted suggest that the filmmakers sought to present this as such.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.9

23. Biological Glib 1.9

24. Physical Glib 1.9