The Dark Knight

Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moon light?

If there’s one line from Tim Burton’s Batman that has stuck with me over the years then it’s that. Uttered by the Jack Nicholson’s Joker it epitomised the character in one line. Fast forward to 2008. After Christopher Nolan’s first foray into Gotham City with Batman Begins, the sequel has been anticipated like no other this year (bar Indiana Jones). The PR job has been fantastic and the film opened last week in the States with a record breaking 3 day tally.

So what did I make of it? As I mentioned last week, I took the time to catch up with Begins and I’m glad I did. The universe that Nolan has shaped is so expansive that you multiple viewings reveal details that would slip past you normally. In short, I loved The Dark Knight. With the majority of the characters and universe set up Nolan just goes all out. The film is two and a half hours long but it’s like a rollercoaster in terms of pacing. Ledger’s Joker is the epitamy of chaos. He wanders through the film killing without a thought and being a truly menacing figure. You fear him because he fears nothing. Ledger deserves to be nominated for his performance. Simple as.

The other new character is Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) as Gotham’s new District Attorney. Darren loved his performance and believes it to be better than Ledger’s. I’ll need to see it a second time to decide but he runs him damn close. Dent is what Batman can’t be, a public figure to face down the mob in court. He’s prepared to stand up and try and bring his city back from the brink. His descent into madness in the third act, while a bit sudden, is tragic.

Christian Bale is excellent once again although the focus is on the newer characters. At the post movie beers I asked the question of ‘Where do you believe Gotham to be modeled on?’. The resounding answer was New York although I’ve always associated him with Chicago. I’m not sure why, I think it just “fits” better. I do associate Spiderman with New York though. One thing we all said was that we’d be seeing this movie again. There’s simply too much to take in first time around and that’s where this film will race away from its rivals in monetary terms. If you haven’t seen it then you should.

Blogging budies there on Tuesday night were:

• Darren Byrne: Literally bouncing after he left the screening.
• Darragh Doyle
• David Maybury
• Mr Rick O’Shea
• Sinead Cochrane
• Damien Mulley

A big thanks to movies.ie for providing the tickets.