Reviewed by Byron Potau<\/p>\n
The Summer\u2019s most anticipated film, The Dark Knight, finally arrived late last night and my reaction was\u2026 well, a bit mixed.\u00a0 Even in a year of comic book hero movies this film seems to stand aside on its own.\u00a0 Notice I did not say stand out.\u00a0 The film lives up to the \u201cdark\u201d in its title but does not give the sense of truly achieving its full down note.\u00a0 Yet, if the film is not an enjoyable whole, it does have some enjoyable pieces.<\/p>\n
The film picks up with new District Attorney Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart, as the city\u2019s new symbol goodness and righteousness while Batman, played by Christian Bale, has to deal with the criminals on an everyday basis as well as the occasional copycat vigilante.\u00a0 As Dent, Batman, and Lt. Gordon, played by a restrained Gary Oldman, join forces to put the city\u2019s mob away, up and coming criminal Joker, played by Heath Ledger, does what he can to destroy their plans and bring as much chaos and mayhem to the city as possible.\u00a0 Added to this are Bruce Wayne\u2019s feelings for D.A. Rachel Dawes, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, which are accelerated by her budding romance with Dent, and his desire to give up his alter ego and replace it with a more acceptable symbol of justice in the form of Dent\u2019s crusading D.A.<\/p>\n
The film is overlong with a little drag, and does not seem to hit the right notes, leaving the viewer uncertain, as if the film really has not come to its resolution.\u00a0 Like its predecessor, Batman Begins, it leaves you with the feeling that the next film in the series will be a lot better.\u00a0 This film does correct the one glaring weakness from the previous film and that is the horrible miscasting of Katie Holmes as D.A. Rachel Dawes.\u00a0 Now played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, the character is given some believability by her more assured acting.\u00a0 The rest of the cast are solid with newcomer Aaron Eckhart fitting in nicely in the role of Harvey Dent.\u00a0 The hot topic of discussion in any review of this film will be the performance of the late Heath Ledger as the Joker.\u00a0 It would be likely that whatever his performance it would be overly praised simply because of his untimely death.\u00a0 However, I am here to tell you that his performance is worth every bit of praise it receives.\u00a0 Far from the cartoony Jack Nicholson portrayal of the Joker, Ledger goes for a more realistic, psychopathic portrayal which is at times truly frightening.\u00a0 The film comes to life whenever he is in the scene and our eyes are glued to him, closely watching his hunched walk and every lick of his lips completely mesmerized.\u00a0 Though circumstances being what they are, we may have the first posthumous Oscar awarded next year since Peter Finch in Network, and if so, it would be well deserved and a bittersweet end to a brief and promising career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reviewed by Byron Potau The Summer\u2019s most anticipated film, The Dark Knight, finally arrived late last night and my reaction was\u2026 well, a bit mixed.\u00a0 Even in a year of comic book hero movies this film seems to stand aside on its own.\u00a0 Notice I did not say stand out.\u00a0 The film lives up to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}