To cap off the season of super hero movies, The Dark Knight delivers a winner with its dark and haunting story. It also showcases one of the best performances by an actor that I have ever seen.
Gotham City is on the road to recovery as corruption is being eradicated and the new District Attorney, Harvey Dent, is going after organized crime. Bruce Wayne believes there might be a time when Batman is no longer needed and Dent might be the answer. From here the audience watches as Gotham City unravels at the hands of the Joker.
Heath Ledger delivers a performance that lives up to the hype 100 percent. He literally becomes the Joker in the most amazing portrayal of a psychopath caught on film in awhile. He is intense, frightening, and deeply disturbed, and yet still managed to capture the Joker's twisted sense of humor. It felt real and it felt scary. In many ways he steals the film and I found myself excitedly anticipating his next scene.
My biggest complaint is that I felt the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Rachel Dawes was flat and lacked believability. I think it is critical to the turning point of the story, so the lack of connection is unfortunate and I think the problem falls on the casting of Maggie Gyllenhaal. Although I actually like her quite a bit, she was the wrong choice for this role and lacked the necessary chemistry and heart that needed to be brought to the character.
