So here we were 3 hours prior to the release of The Dark Knight and my buddy and myself planted our bums into the “non kicking” seats that I love so much. You know the last row of the center stack of seats that guarantees the movie watcher that no nacho eating Metrosexuals would have their naked feet up on your neck in the middle of the flick. Upon sitting and commencing to play on the Blackberry in anticipation of this heavily hyped movie… I thought to myself, what if the fanbois are right this time? It’s one thing to laugh at the idiots who made this out to be the best movie ever without even seeing it, but the reviews I was seeing from people (who saw it) with legitimate opinions were all stellar.

Droves of nerds flowed into the theater, yes I called them nerds. Faces painted in a messy mud of white, red and green, numbering not 2 or 3 but more like 10-12. And it was quite obvious who was responsible for packing our theater tonight, it may have been titled The Dark Knight but people were here to see Heath Ledger’s Joker. The time ticked away quickly and the theater packs, the usual unrealistic people pop in, looking over the theater hoping that someone will spare them a couple seats. No such luck, maybe they didn’t catch on to the fact that they were coming in late to the most anticipated movie of 2008. But who knows. The trailers come on and they aren’t bad, all relevant to the audience, well minus the Disney animated feature that we know will get high ratings, well because it’s animated (roll eyes here). The trailers fade, and the screen goes dark for the intro music… the nerds go crazy.

I will say that I was probably one of the biggest cynics about The Dark Knight, since it featured everyone from Batman Begins except for Katie “TomKat” Holmes. So with the thought as to how lukewarm that movie was, I figured this would not be that far beyond it’s scope. People were going crazy due to the tragedy of Ledger’s passing and I felt as if the anticipation was all about that and had little to do with the actual movie. A friend of mine even commented that one guy who had been waiting at the theater for twelve hours, was shown a tattoo of Harlequin and had no idea who she was. So upon hearing that it reinforced my thought of people being there for Ledger’s performance and nothing else.

The film starts and the initial scene (which is all over the internet) silences the crowd. We are introduced to the Joker and all of my cynicism floated away. Without revealing too much, I must say that rare has it been since I’ve seen a villain keep me guessing like this one. The sheer madness and volatile behavior of the Joker was so believable I did not know what to expect whenever he was on screen. At one point when he holds a man up at knife point I saw the cute brunette to my left biting her fingers in fear. My buddy off to my right admitted to his heart beating loudly in his chest and me… I was just blown away by it all. There is acting, and there is acting, this was not an act. It felt as if there really was a nut in white paint rolling around murdering people and blowing things up. Character acting, I’m no expert on but I can say that this one made me a believer.

For breakdown of plot and characters I will leave that to the millions of other reviews you can read. As the number one hater of the fanbois for this movie, I felt as if I needed to give this review from the heart and convey the message that it is as good as the nerds are claiming. No it’s better, because they got rid of the Tom Kat. Christian Bale steps up his game in this one but I still could not stand that “Batman voice” he does whenever he is masked, the thing is so bad it almost took away from his character all because I wanted to laugh whenever he talked. Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman are solid per their norm and though I was skeptical about Aaron Eckhart playing Harvey Dent, I have to give him a close second for my favorites because he made a believer out of me.

What an awesome movie but I must warn you that the title says it all. If you have children, you may want to think twice before dragging them into this movie. I am not one to tell you how to raise junior, but if 30 year old men feel so compelled to put on their sister’s makeup over the influence of Ledger’s performance. Just imagine what your kid will do after seeing this. The tragedy of course is that this movie reveals the gem of an actor Heath Ledger was, beyond the anal sex in Brokeback Mountain and his earlier movies. Like Brandon Lee who also died creating the movie that symbolised his career, Heath Ledger’s Dark Knight shows that we have truly lost another great talent. An absolutely dark but well done movie in every aspect, and I now happily place it on my list of greats in cinema.

  STAR RATING: (8/10)   ★★★★★★★★★★