Movie Review: The Dark Knight

Took the girls to Manchester's IMAX theatre today to see this. Apparently there are six (or so) scenes shot in IMAX 3D.

This is the first time I've been to a 3D show where you didn't have to wear special glasses to get the effect. OK, OK, that shows (a) my age and (b) that I don't go to the cinema much any more. What can I say? When you have a 50-inch plasma TV and a Dolby5.1 surround-sound home cinema system, you don't need to go to the cinema much.

Except to see IMAX. God. It was awesome. And I mean that in its original sense, not in the vacuous American high school "ah-summmmm" sense. Those 3D scenes - the ones shot from high above the Gotham city skyline looking down, especially the night-time one where Batman leaps from a tall building, extends his bat-wings and flies (glides) around the skyscrapers for a bit - were simply breathtaking.

Special effects apart, and not wishing to spoil the plot for anyone, the rest of the movie was good. Much has been written about how dark it is, and it is. Both literally in places, and figuratively. But in this case that's a good thing. It's quite clever too - the symbolism of starting the film with mainly sunny scenes and daytime aerial shots, and moving it to night scenes as the story gets darker. Very graphic.

Much has also been written about Heath Ledger's monumental performance as the Joker. I suspect most of that is right too. No, he didn't "steal" the film. He was a very significant, but integral, part of it. But his acting? You can't really call it acting. He INHABITED the character. He was the Joker, pure and simple, and for once, and rightly so, there was nothing funny about the Joke. I'd put Heath's Joker in the top five performances I've seen in a film, ever. He'll be a hard act to follow, and presumably (OK, small spoiler coming up), since the Joker survived he will at some stage be followed.

Criticisms? If pushed I'd say the movie is about 30 minutes too long. Indeed at one point somewhere between 1:50 and 2:15 (and since our showing started at noon, those are both times-into-the-movie and actual clock times) things got so slow and tedious that I fell asleep, only to be woken up with a HUGE jump by a set of exploding windows. That'll teach me. And those interminable fight scenes. Why do directors think we want to see long sequences of thwapthwapthwapthwap when you can't really tell what's going on? Yawn. Very clever, seen it before, get on with the plot, thank you.

One for the DVD collection though, definitely. There is so much going on in the film that it will certainly stand another watch. Might even be the one that convinces me to buy a Blu-ray player.