Reviewed by Prabal Goel
Hindu Voice UK, August 2008

After much adieu, the Dark Knight is finally here and audiences have flocked to the cinema to view the last complete performance of Heath Ledger, who passed away before the film was released.

Saving you the need to skip the rest of the review to get the part about Ledger’s role, I’ll talk about that as the first thing and to that, I’ll just say that Heath Ledger is brilliant as the Joker. I’m not just saying that to be mindful of the passing away of the actor or to pay homage (although I do both). Heath Ledger performance as the Joker is in fact the best thing in a film that has several other strong performances from many heavyweight actors, such Christian Bale as Batman, Gary Oldman as Commission Gordon and Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent.

Ledger plays the Joker with a sadistic and chilling simplicity, a simplicity that’s almost nail-biting. Though very funny at times, the humour of the part is very unsettling. One almost gets a sense of purity about the Joker in his dedication to sheer chaos and anarchy; he has no ulterior motive like money or power for committing to crime, no agenda to push in his reign of terror – he is just an entity that takes sheer delight in upsetting the balance of order. I couldn’t help but think that there are some filmmakers and storytellers out there who do what they do because they have an opinion to voice or a desire to change how people think. And then are others such as Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez who make movie for just the sheer love of cinema and to be a part of it and in that respect, I actually found the Joker’s role quite inspiring

And it isn’t just the performance in itself. It is a very well scripted role and I dare say that in my opinion, with such a well written script, another good actor should and hopefully would indeed be able to fill in for the part of the Joker in a subsequent movie. However the same cannot be said for all the roles in the film, in particular that of District Attorney Harvey Dent who throughout the film has traumatic experiences and goes from being idealistic public serviceman to psychotic madman Two-Face. The comics had always made it clear that the schizophrenic psychotic nature had always been innate to Harvey Dent, masked only by an outer layer which is shed upon having the love of his life taken away from him. However, this isn’t sufficiently touched upon in the film, such that his reasons for the change aren’t quite as compelling. This I thought was one of the main issues with the film – that and the fact the movie was overly scored. And when you combine that with the fact that the movie was heavy plotted with numerous storylines and twists, the experience can be a bit erratic and unfocused.

However, notwithstanding all that I would say that the Dark Knight is still a very good film and one that I would wanna go see at least a few more times. Oh and if I didn’t say it enough times already, Heath Ledger as the Joker is brilliant. One of the best lines of the film is when the Joker says to Batman – “I don’t want to kill you, you complete me”.