The Dark Knight is, for me, a very rare film because I am giving it four out of five stars. That's something I hardly do. In fact, out of all the movies that I've seen, I've only rated seventeen of them four stars and only given four movies five stars. The reason The Dark Knight rated so highly with me is largely due to Heath Ledger's final performance as The Joker. The nervous twitches, the little smacks of the tongue, the maniacal cackle, and the sometimes unsteady movements almost give the impression that Ledger is the tortured and psychotic Joker. An unstable person might just become so consumed with perfecting the performance that they too would become dark and tortured enough to be swallowed up by depression and prescription drugs. When I think a movie is worth more than a three star rating when, it's because something about it was memorable. And I will remember this Joker for a long while, and I will remember it particularly because it was one Heath's best performance. It is such a tragedy that he will not live to grow even more as an actor and to give us the enjoyment of another performance like this one.

Not having seen a Batman movie in a long time, I can't say whether Christian Bale's performance is typical or not. All I will say is that it was very well done. He isn't some superhero who can save the world without getting dirty and making some hard decisions. He has had to make some hard choices and some sacrifices, but the world still isn't a very nice place. And at times, he fails to do what he wants to do and be who he feels he should be, but he is leaving things a little bit better than they were before.

Aaron Eckhart played Harvey Dent to a tee, the Gotham District Attorney who carries the weight of being believed to be the savior of Gotham. But when he loses the love of his life, anger eats at him and drives him to madness and revenge.

I enjoyed the visuals, the shots of Hong Kong in particular. There is violence, of course, but it feels necessary and not silly like in a lot of action movies.

Nice write up Joseph , I will wait till it comes out on DVD , as its not a movie I just have to see .

The only thing I will say as I said before , he had Jack Nicholson to give him some direction being a joker I dont mean that Heath is a poor actor , but Jack to me made the joker better then the original joker , Cesar Romero . I watched every TV Batman episode as it was my favorite show when I was a kid .

Its getting to where to many remakes are being done and they dont interest me much .
I did like the first Christian Bale BatMan movie .
The only one I didnt really care for was the George Clooney one .

I would't have gone to see it if it had not been Heath Ledger's last movie. I've never had an interest in Batman, but I ended up really enjoying myself. I absolutely loathe the original show that re-reuns on TVLand.

I can see Jack being a good Joker. He appears to be naturally crazy anyway.

I read an interview with the guy that played Alfred and he said that everyone thinks that because the character that Heath made out of the Joker was so over the top and absolutely crazy that it had to mess with his head. But he said the truth was that in between takes Heath acted like a normal guy and talked about his daughter alot. He said Heath was a great kid.

Michael Caine.

I don't know. Something about Heath always made him seem like there were some dark things going on somewhere in his mind. We'll never know what sent him over the edge, but my guess is that it wouldn't have taken much.

Same can be said about John Belushi , and other young actors and comedians that dies from drugs , They were Brilliant at their craft & their inner demons made them crack .
But who really knows ???

We just got back from seeing it. It was quite different but quite good. Alot more real-world and less comic-booky. Heath's portrayal of the Joker was amazing and I had no idea it was going to feature Two-Face. It was a very well done movie!