Dark, intense, harrowing. They don't call the caped crusader "The Dark Knight" for nothing. Always hiding in the shadow and striking at night, Batman is more of a tormented vigilante than a revered superhero, watching over his beloved Gotham.
"Batman Begins" drills down to the core. It provides deep insight about the character and the life journey that he travels. It explains who he is, why, and how he becomes the way he is. Plagued with fear, guilt, and rage, it shows the transformation from a traumatized child to a debonair billionaire turned troubled hero. With the right intensity and anguish, wit and charm, Christian Bale is the only Bruce Wayne. Personally, I liked the complex breadth of the story of 'Begins' better than 'Knight.'
BUT, if there's one thing that 'Knight' shines is the provocative nature. It boils down to one element that overshadows everything else, the JOKER. Sheer insanity. Here the story is no less complex, as a matter of fact, multi-layered. The characters are multi-dimensional and no less flawed. Batman has truly met his match.
Never before have I witnessed a nefarious nemesis with such disturbing deft that it leaves me hanging by a thread. Heath Ledger's performance is legendary. Absolutely menacing and chilling to the bone, he strikes real terror as you can't hardly believe what he's going to do next.
If Gotham has already been shrouded in dread before with organized crimes, the Joker elevates it to horrifying heights. He takes everything that Batman believes in and turns his own convictions against him. With pure devilish exuberance, he dementedly experiments with human emotions like child's play. Watch when he tells the tales to different hostages about how he got his (smiley) scars; how he gets inside their head and under their skin. He meticulously and ruthlessly infuses anarchy and constructs chaos, gleefully rearranged order in society like pieces of a puzzle without superpower or fancy gadgetry. Just a brilliant psychopath who has no limit of what he's capable of or willing to do - except decimating Batman - because then, the fun would be gone and he would cease to exist.
Then there is Two-Face, tangled among the conspiracies. One side is a hero, a symbol of hope and goodness; the other a villain of inconsolable fury and revenge. His fall from "White Knight" grace shows how vulnerable the line between righteousness and madness is.
Yet it when it comes down to it, it's choices. Whatever fate or chances handed to us, we still make our own conscious choices.
The cinematography doesn't disappoint and the special effects never overpowers. While 'Begins' shines the light eerily on Gotham, the highlight in 'Knight' is an utmost daring escape from a skyscraper in HongKong. The heady run of the BatCycle trumps over the BatMobile. The score soars and especially captures those nerve-wracking moments flawlessly.
At 2.5 hours, "The Dark Knight" is a spine-tingling spectacle to behold. DVD:
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