The Dark Knight (2008)

The second outing of Batman since the reinvention of the franchise has set the movie-going public into a frenzy. I have never seen a cinema quite so packed on a Tuesday night. But does The Dark Knight deliver?
Yes it does.
Christian Bale seems to have comfortably assumed the Bruce Wayne role, effortlessly shifting from the playboy put-on to action hero. Michael Caine's Alfred skewers with his cutting wit. Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent rides the razor's edge of driven (or maniacal) public servant. And one hopes that Katie Holmes is kicking her husband's ass for interfering with her career and letting her part go to Maggie Gyllenhaal, who does a fine job, by the way.
And then there's the Heath Ledger. The central villain of the piece, the Joker never completely steals the show, which makes this movie a better balanced outing than the Tim Burton version. In fact, he comes across just creepy and tentative at first when we really get to see him dealing with Gotham's underworld. But as the scene unfolds, and the crazy keeps unrolling, the Joker becomes genuinely and brilliantly disturbing. Warped to the core, the Joker brings chaos while the Batman tries to determine his place in Gotham now that his pressure on the gangs have caused them to let a sadistic genie out of the bottle.
The action dark and brutal. The psychological space the movie inhabits matches the action, punch by punch, gunshot by gunshot, as Gotham spirals downward. The body count is substantial and Batman pulls few punches. If I were to find fault with this movie, I would point most to two things: the voice Christian Bale affects as Batman is a hoarse, guttural whisper that sounds so labored that I wish they had come up with some other way for Bruce to disguise his voice in public, and the Batmobile action sequences push the gritty and dark envelope with a bit of cheese. The rest of the movie is an experience to enjoy even while gleefully shuddering at the Joker's explanations for his facial scars...
Grade: A-