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Anni tahto nähä tän revikan minkä kirjotin eräälle yksityiselle foorumille, ja imdb ei ottanut kirosanasuodattimen takia, joten tässä nyt tämä:

Reviewing a movie like The Dark Knight is, to me, in many ways, impossible. It's like being a literary critic who has to review The Watchmen, War&Peace or something. With movie, it isn't very common for a dilemma of this type to surface. You see movies may surpass one's expectations, but when they do so, most people are still fully functional of viewing them from an objective viewpoint, but in literary there are books that simply affected the entire industry around them too much to be reviewed as if they were just average books, because they affected the industry too much.

The Dark Knight might not be one of these movies to anyone else or the public audience, but I don't give a damn about that. To me, The Dark Knight is by far the first movie to reach into my hear and tear it out. It hurt. Don't get me wrong, it's a movie with the most glaringly perfected technical qualities in years, possible decades, but it's a very, very cruel picture. From the bottom of my heart I can truly say that if there is one movie that makes me cry with nothing but dialogue and excitement, this is it. I didn't cry, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't have wanted to. During the final scene of the film, when a certain someone has a certain someone in his/hers hands and threathening with murder, the scene simply grows so emotionally stressing and anxiety-filled, it makes you want to cry. Or, atleast that's what happened in my case. There are a few other scenes of that type, and they all shock you, because they aren't the stuff in comic books. They aren't the type of scenes that appear in ANY movies, let alone films that are defined as comic book-adaptations.

So uhh. I know what you want to hear the gazillionth comment on. Yes, Heath Ledger is the best Joker ever, including all the comic book adaptations. I don't personally think that statement does his performance justice though. I would say that he is possibly the best sociopath I have ever seen on celluloid. Every scene he is in grows simply disturbing the longer they go on. When he is eventually captured and gets a 1-on-1 talk with Batman, his actions, and moreso the way Ledger showcases them, are what will earn him an Oscar, a Golden Globe and every other award that it can get. The entire performance is incredible, and it can't possibly be praised with words. You can only see it to understand it. Now there however are some complaints about his performance not fitting the character. I beg to differ. These complaints come from people who have seen the Jack Nicholson-version of The Joker, and are most likely caused by the sheer shock that people may very well be in after seeing Ledger's version of it. The character is written wholly different anyhow, so comparisons between the two, no matter how common place, do not speak any truth. And Ledger doesn't do so either. Everything he tells of himself in this movie is a joke, that seems to only amuse himself. The stories of how he got his scars are definately fake, and he simply seems to come out of nowhere. As far as his evildoings go... You know how often people say that a villain lives in a world with no rules? Well this is the first villain to actually carry out deeds that, indeed, do not adhere to any rules or laws. He does what he wants, and what he wants to do is "see the world burn" as Alfred says at one point.

Speaking of villains, there aren't any others really. Two-Face is in, but he is nothing more than... well, I don't want to spoil, but he IS NOT a villain per say, but something different, and very vital to the movie itself. There is also an assortment of mob bosses, but they don't play a large role, since they only really work as pawns of The Joker, who plays them as he wishes. For Begins-fans, you will be glad to know that Scarecrow does appear, and we get to find out what happened to him after Begins and we also see his demise (although it leaves room for his return, I doubt it). And if you think of that as a spoiler, don't, because he only appears within the movie's first 15 minutes or so.

Since we now have the bad guys out of the way, why don't we just move on to the good ones, eh? Christian Bale does his best performance as Bruce Wayne this time, even topping off his spectacular work in American Psycho. Gary Oldman does his best role, and does so in style. Actually, out of the characters in this movie I can call whole-heartedly good, he is the one I would call my favourite. The best? No, but my favourite, you can't choose the best one out of a cast like this. In Batman Begins, the biggest complaint people had was primarily either the villain or the person playing Rachel Dawes, Katie Holmes. Gladly she has now been replaced with the more appropiate Maggie Gyllenhaal, who does the role as well as possible, however she doesn't have a lot of screentime in this one. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, who play Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, work as good assistants to Batman's quest for justice, and actually do gain a lot of backstory for them.

Now that I finally said that word, we might as well get to it. The story. Let me tell you. It's nothing like you think. It doesn't matter what you're thinking before going to this movie, unless you've read a synopsis of the plot, you will not be able to predict the directions this movie takes. I have personally read hundreds of Batman comic books, seen all the trailers and TV-spots, and I managed to predict one single plot point correctly in a movie that has literally thousands of them. I know this might sound like the movie goes over-the-top, but in this movie, about as much happens as in the entire Godfather-trilogy. That might give some a heart attack taking note of how much that equals to, but trust me, Nolan handles it expertly. This is a well-composed masterpiece as far as the story goes. I won't tell you what happens even in the beginning, because all the happenings escalate to something different in a matter of minutes. I will however explain to you what this movie primarily explores.

Ethics. You know, that shit they teach you in school during those boring "let's talk about *****"-classes. The movie pretty much bases itself on a bizarre formula, where The Joker sets up a choice that must be decided within a deadline, and in the end people will almost always end up dead. I believe that The Joker makes these in order to make Batman break his only rule of not killing people, because in some of these, such things are unavoidable. I will now describe one of these situations, so if you are 100% sure you want nothing to do with the whole spoiler-filled part of the review, look away now, because SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD. One of these ethical dilemmas that The Joker makes, involves two ferrys full of people. The other, full of prisoners, and the other, civilians. If anyone jumps out, both ferrys get blown up. Each ferry is given a detonator, that blows up the other ferry. If one ferry is exploded, the remaining may live. They have a 15-minute deadline to make the decision. SLIGHT SPOILERS END HERE. Does that not just make your skin crawl? Nolan directs this scene as if he was some modern-day Hitchcock, filling it with intensity by simply showing people trying to decide if it is right or wrong to kill others. The result... it's a surprise, like everything else this movie has. But the most important thing is that these surprises within the story, have a purpose.

Think about it. Nowadays we are so filled with garbage movies that only tell tales of excitement or entertainment, people have forgotten that it is very possibly to combine philosophical content with excitement and entertainment. The Dark Knight does just that, it provides an insight study in human ethics while remaining the most thrilling action-piece of the decade.



Here comes the big one. I need to decide wether or not I will call this the best movie I have seen in my life. It is. I know that's a very bold statement, but sweet jesus, there is nothing wrong with this movie and it touches me deeper than any piece of film I have ever seen. Only the real life of all of us can touch us as much as this movie did me. And speaking of that life, I'm going to go now and enjoy mine. Thank you for reading.