Review of The Dark Knight

I really enjoy watching action movies, and The Dark Knight did not disappoint at all. The movie begins with a bank robbery, the only major thing you notice about the robbers is they are all wearing the same "joker" masks. The robbers start killing each other one by one only saying that the "boss" told them to do it. At the end of all of the action the only robber left is the Joker. That whole scene really jump started the way the movie was going. The acting in this movie is really interesting. The role of Harvey Dent played by Aaron Eckhart is a really fun character. He starts out playing a district attorney that is going after all of the organized crime in Gotham. He is strong willed and very driven. He is in love with Rachel, the longtime friend of Bruce Wayne. He is a man of passion and has a drive to do the right thing. All of that comes to an end when the Joker kidnaps both him and Rachel and gives Batman the choice of saving only one of them. Batman chooses to save Dent himself and have the police save Rachel. Only Batman was successful in saving Dent. After Harvey has to listen to his love die he turns his aggression towards rage and being vengeful towards police commissioner Gordon and Batman. He kidnaps Gordon's family and tells batman to choice which one lives and which one dies. The full transformation of this character is done extremely well by Eckhart. You feel really proud at the beginning of the movie that he is a good guy and at the end you feel sad for him and you feel betrayed. You feel betrayed because a man that has dedicated his life to stopping crime turned to crime so easily.
The other character i would like to discuss is the character of the Joker played by Heath Ledger. This character has some complexity in his mannerisms and the way he manipulates the police, the crime lords, Harvey Dent and Batman. The main goal of the Joker is not to get rich or to be the most powerful man in Gotham. He main goal is to create total anarchy in the city and to bring Batman down to his level and make him a murderer. The Joker is a schizophrenic psychopath, that like most criminals, has an objective. He is good at making people choose the path, he always creates a choice for his victims, whether that be the people on the two different ships at the end of the movie or Batman choosing to save Harvey Dent or Rachel or the people choosing to kill the man or blow up the hospital. I really like all of the little complexities of the character, the way he would jump around and get excited every time someone would talk about Batman. The way that he would always lick his scars on the sides of his face. Heath Ledger won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for this role, and while some people think he just won the award because of his death, I think he won it because this was the best acting job of his career.
The article that I found for this film described how much Ledger immersed himself in this role. The article was written by Kristopher Topley, he describes that Ledger never came out of character while he was on the set, filming or not. Topley quoted Aaron Echhart in his article, saying the actor would ask Ledger a question while they were on the set and he would respond instinctively in character. He talked about how much Ledger had come out of his own shell and opened up to play this character. The article also says that Ledger did research into victims that have scars on their face. His research found that they lick there scars, he did this in the movie. That type of research and performance really shows how much work Ledger did to prepare for this role, and it really comes out on film.

Heath Ledger. Tapley, Kristopher. Daley Variety. Vol. 301. Issue 45. 12/8/2008

The Art of Watching Films. Boggs, Petrie. McGraw Hill. New York, New York. 2008.