The Friday Freak Review: The Dark Knight

 Cast:

Christian Bale
Michael Caine
Heath Ledger
Gary Oldman
Aaron Eckhart
Maggie Gyllenhaal
Morgan Freeman

Superhero movies have a habit of disappointing people when they are looking forward to it the most. Who would forget Ang Lee's Hulk, which made that ;'Smash-Em-Up' movie in a deep philosophical question? Or, who could forgive Superman Returns for wasting a chance for the most popular superhero ever to come back into the 2000s?

 Knowing what an disappointment Super Man returns one, I was wondering whether this would be the same case with the announced Dark Knight. Would they go into the family problems that Bruce Wayne had, maybe start a back story that his father had died a poor woman and this was the problem that caused a dysfunctional family or something.... I dreaded it.

I did have a glimmer of hope when I saw the first rushes, and I particularly wet my pants when I saw the Joker's first looks. However, I remembered how Superman Return's rushes showed us this awesome scene where a bullet hits Superman's eye and the bullet bounces away. Well, remember that was the only 'oooh' scene in the entire movie.

However, as the characters emerged I really thought that Dark Knight would bring back the fun in superhero movies, and it did. Right from the beginning of the movie, there is not a single moment when you do not dread what the Joker does. The screen literally lights up every time the Joker comes, or even his trademark music starts to ring. One thing that the movie got right was making the Joker the main character, with keeping Batman's pathos in mind, that was the same kind of jugglematch these both used to play in the comics, and the scriptwriter and screenwriter have kept that in mind.

What makes the Dark Knight such a intense viewing is that this s the first movie that actually tells us, informs us, what Batman is up against, and what a kind of weird, twisted world the Gotham world is. Who needs a GTA when they have a Gotham?

What makes this movie so much the more beautiful is the dark, skanky atmosphere that has been given to Gotham City, as well as the music of Hans Zimmer, which basically takes the movie to an entirely different level.

The performances of everyone as as stellar as performances of such groundbreaking movies go. What also pleases the fanboy in me is the kind of chase sequences and the action scenes  - something that no superhero movie cannot do without.  And thankfully, there are no diamond heists that Batman has to stop in this movie - the entire emotion of humanity is at stake - and there is no mincing words in that one.  Definitely get this one