The Dark Knight review

***Contains Spoilers***
Wow, what an awesome film! My girlfriend thought it was not as good as Batman Begins. I originally agreed with her, now I have some doubts. I don't think it's worth 10/10 like so many people are rating it on IMDB, and it still can't beat out Blade Runner (1982!!!) or Return of the Jedi in my opinion for a movie in the same genre but the heart-pounding action and surprises made this 2.5-hour movie seem an hour shorter.



Heath Ledger was awesome (never heard of him until he unfortunately passed away, then just today when I looked up who played the Joker), probably better than Nicholson in the first Batman.

Some reviewer of this movie on IMDB pointed out that the hand-to-hand combat wasn't that great. I noticed that in a couple of scenes but it didn't bother me until I read the comment and thought about how much better they could have been. Ever seen the Steven Seagal and Tommy Lee Jones double-knife fight in Under Siege? Hard to beat that with the exception of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and tons of other Chinese movies I'm sure. In any case, the hand-to-hand combat isn't bad, but they missed out on a way to make the movie even better, especially since Christian Bale was doing ninja training in Batman Begins. Other annoyance: the bank robbers at the start of the movie were pretty bad actors (at least their voices) and the morality lesson of the two ferries not blowing each other up was a little over the top (in real life they would have blown each other up within a minute unless they could somehow communicate with each other and agree to simultaneously throw away the remote controls).

Overall however, the annoyances were tiny compared to the overall enjoyment. Well worth the $7.50. Oh, and the flashing balloon scene in Hong Kong was so incredible that I would have considered the movie worth my time even if the rest of it sucked. And even though the hospital was small, blowing up a real building (from what I could tell) is always better than shitty CGI. Blade Runner and Return of the Jedi--movies made over 20 years ago--had better special-effects than most sci-fi movies today.

I'd give it an 8.5/10 on IMDB if I could. Since I can't, I gotta go down to 8.0 just because I'm comparing it to the other great sci-fi movies. From what I can remember of the last Batman (did your theater flash its lights at the end of the movie to simulate a bat?), it's just as good, but definitely not worse.