The Dark Knight

As the last scene of the movie faded into darkness, the audiences breaks into a mixture of clapping and cheering. I took a brief moment to bring myself back to reality and wishing that we didn’t have to wait a few years till the next one comes out. We quickly walked up the stairs to exit the IMAX theater hoping to beat the restroom rush and my heart was still pounding with excitement when we were riding the escalator down. I couldn’t help but say “Wow! That was a darn great movie!”

The Dark Knight is bigger and better than the previous Batman movies that I’ve seen before, and I am glad to see that someone has finally revived the Batman movie series. (starting with Batman Begins, of course.) It is an action packed movie that gets your heart pumping within 5 minutes into the film, and takes you on a rollercoaster ride till the very end. This movie quite simply put, is amazing!

I know it has already been said numerous times, but I just have to say it again; Heath Ledger did a tremendous job at portraying the Joker. In my opinion, this was his finest work in his lifetime, and through this role, he has proven that he is a different class of actor. You will not find a trace of Heath Ledger in this film as his mannerism, his speech, the accent has completely transformed, and he has became one with his character. I don’t think that anyone else would have done a better job than him.

This version of the Joker is more twisted and darker than before, and quite frankly, he scares me! He is a criminal genius, and as he said so himself “a better class of criminal;” watching this movie was like watching a novice chess player (Batman, Gotham police) go against the grand master (the Joker). The novice reacts and ponders each step to take against the grand master’s action, not knowing that in reality each decision they made was already predetermined by the grand master already. The Joker certainly played the game brilliantly, and although he was apprehended at the end, Batman lost…

I also very much enjoyed their interpretation of how Harvey Dent became Two Face; it was a romantic tragedy that made my heart ache. Ache for his loss and ache for the Joker’s success.

I am not sure how they snatched up a PG-13 rating. To be fair, there were no nudity or swearing in the movie, however, I do not think this movie would be appropriate for your 13 year old, unless you want to scare them and say “ok honey, this is what will happen if you make mommy and daddy mad, so be a good boy/girl now.” If you have any inkling of seeing this movie, or maybe you chose to see Mamma Mia! this past weekend instead, you got to go see it; and the only way to see this movie is at an IMAX theater, especially since they shot the movie with IMAX cameras. Wait if you have to, but see it in IMAX, you won’t regret it!

Oh and just in case you were reading all of this to find out if I made it to the bathroom before the rush... sadly, I didn't. :P