The Dark Knight
Calling The Dark Knight a superhero or comic book movie is like calling Casablanca a chick flick: Technically it's correct, but it doesn't quite capture the nuance of the film. Of course, The Dark Knight and Casablanca have almost nothing in common, other than their respective brilliance.
If Batman Begins is part origin, part detective story, The Dark Knight is 100 percent crime drama—a film noir dressed in a cape and cowl, grappling with a murky line between right and wrong, good and evil, virtue and sin. Like the cinema equivalent of an alchemist producing gold, Christopher Nolan deftly melds pulse-pounding action, palpable terror and several gripping morality plays into a genre masterpiece unlikely to ever be bested.
Continuing his crusade against the mob, Batman's positive impact on Gotham City has earned him a long leash from the police, and in particular from his friend Lt. James Gordon. Batman also comes to trust new district attorney Harvey Dent, whose own gung-ho, anti-crime crusade and squeaky clean image make him the public face for justice Batman can never be. Unfortunately for Bruce Wayne, Dent is also courting his former flame, Rachel Dawes (now played with much more vivaciousness by Maggie Gyllenhaal).
All these well-laid plans to restore law and order to Gotham, however, are about to come apart at the seams when a completely underestimated criminal nuisance dressed as a maniacal clown muscles in on the mob and demands half of their cash to eliminate their biggest problem: The Batman.
Alas, that doesn't even scratch the surface of what the Joker is really after—utter chaos. Why? Why is the sky blue? Why does the Earth orbit the sun? Why did the chicken cross the road? There is no method to the Joker's madness—never has been—and that is the enormity of the task assumed by the late Heath Ledger.
Anyone can play a madman. It takes a special kind of talent to bring someone as randomly demented as the Joker to life. Someone who understands what makes him tick, even if no one, including his writers, have ever fully understood. Someone who knows why everything Joker does is funny, but only to him. Someone who can turn your emotions from dread to amusement to abject horror in a matter of seconds.
Ledger is simply stupendous.
The Batman/Joker relationship is one of balance and instability, order and bedlam, integrity and injustice. Their yin-yang conflict has captivated readers for almost 70 years because every time they face each other, Joker brings Batman to the brink of falling into an abyss, the edge of which he walks along every night.
Indeed, that is the whole crux of The Dark Knight. How can this vigilante detective hold to the ambiguous moral code he has set for himself while one psychopath after another threatens to tear everything down? Villains like the Joker and another famous foil who crops up later (if you don't already know Harvey Dent's fate, I won't spoil it for you) are a representation of the path Bruce Wayne's tragic life could have taken and still can. They are a reflection of the responsibility he shoulders every night and how his actions have a direct impact on what Batman means to the city he protects.
The Dark Knight is an enormous undertaking on almost every level, from its extraordinary action set pieces (with very little CGI) to its complex, multi-themed storyline. There are more than enough subplots to risk the film crashing and burning, but Nolan keeps it all moving briskly and logically, an ironic undertaking given the story's main antagonist. And as marvelous as Heath Ledger is, the circumstances of his death could serve to overshadow a wealth of rich performances, including Aaron Eckhart's optimistic portrayal of a real crusader, Gary Oldman's stoic role as Batman's only friend in the outside world, and especially Christian Bale, who once again proves his mettle in the most complex role the comic book world has to offer.