Director	Christopher Nolan
Length	154 mins
Certificate	12A
Rating	Film making: 4  Personal enjoyment: 4

The Dark Knight, is not a traditional comic book movie, but rather an ambitious and epic genre movie - the genre essentially being that of the gangster/crime film. Following almost immediately on from Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight finds Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) hoping to rid himself of his Batman alter ego by giving power to Gotham’s newest ‘white knight’, district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). One major obstacle stands in his way, however: the monstrous, psychopathic Joker (Heath Ledger), who plans on bringing down the mob bosses of Gotham so that the city might have “a better class of criminal”.

There has been much hype surrounding The Dark Knight, from its viral marketing campaign to the untimely death of its star Heath Ledger to the fact that it somehow went straight into the number one slot on IMDb’s top films poll. Thankfully, the movie itself is so engaging that all this hysterical context is able to slip away. The dramatic weight of its individual moments are masterfully balanced with a grand narrative scope, its script bursting with plots and subplots, but also with depth and context. The three lead performances from Bale, Eckhart and Ledger are all hugely compelling: Bale’s existential outsider, while somewhat sidelined, smoulders and smarts with each new blow dealt to his city; Eckhart’s idealistic politician is treated subtly and sensitively, his alarming plot arc feeling persuasive and genuine; Ledger, meanwhile, all but runs away with the film, playing his part with such wired ferocity that he is genuinely chilling, his jumpy unpredictably so unnerving that he is sure to leave children having nightmares for weeks.

It is not just the actors and plot that are impressive: the city of Gotham itself is a powerful aspect of the film and is designed with such an eye for detail that it comes to feel like a character in its own right. Nolan’s handling of the action set-pieces too has advanced since Batman Begins, feeling far more coherent and smooth. If the film has a significant flaw, it is that the director and his collaborators are so intent on putting so much into the film that they have made the narrative attempt too much, causing - amongst other things - some minor (but frustrating) plot holes to emerge. That said, as it is now the standard for critics to assert, The Dark Knight does indeed certainly deserve much credit for taking the comic book movie genre in an intriguing direction, and for making an intelligent and exciting film in the process.