The Dark Knight

First, let me say, this is a GREAT movie. Everybody I know has already said this, but I'm going to say it again: Heath Ledger is absolutely brilliant!

But I did feel a bit upset at the director. It was almost as if Christopher Nolan was so taken in by Heath Ledger's Joker, that he gave the entire center-stage to him; Batman looked like an after-thought. This is a comic-book story about good against evil; but there was very little room for Batman to emerge as a hero. Joker came across as a bigger icon of evil than Batman did as an icon of good. That made me feel a bit cheated.

But what did work for me, was that for a comic-book story, "The Dark Knight" is an incredible 'thinking' movie. Spidey made a miserable effort in his last movie to do a thinking movie & failed. This movie, on the other hand, explores the whole 'US war on terror' situation -- the hero who must fight dirty; a villain who's psyche you can never hope to understand; the conviction that things will get darker until dawn breaks again; the 'social experiment' I thought mirrored the US dilemna on nuclear capaibilities in the Middle East. Very nicely done.

Finally, Heath Ledger. There's a close-up shot of his face in the interrogation room (his make-up is running & he has a creepy scarred smile)-- absolutely gave me the shivers!