Film
The Dark Knight
- Director
- Christopher Nolan
- Certificate
- 12A
- Running Time
- 152 mins
Having successfully ‘rebooted’ the Batman franchise, Christopher Nolan delivered an ambitious, surprisingly grim epic sequel in 2008. The Joker’s catchphrase here is ‘why so serious?’, which could as easily be asked of Nolan as Christian Bale’s hawk-eyed, Clint-croaking Batman. There is so much going on here that, even at 152 minutes, it feels like a cut-down of a whole season of a TV series. Briefly, Batman has waged such a successful campaign against Gotham’s organised criminals that they are forced to ally with the maniacal Joker (Heath Ledger). As our hero conspires with idealistic DA Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and honest cop Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) to put the mob out of business, the Joker plays a wild card.
It’s a less satisfying film than Batman Begins, but there’s no denying the effectiveness of its Michael Mann-like action sequences and the sheer scale of its storyline. Ledger’s Joker delivers a whole new take which finally makes the villain the monstrous arch-nemesis he has been in the comics. The downside is that the plot is so busy that threads hang out all over the place.
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