The Dark Knight ****

"Either you die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

- Harvey Dent

This film stands out among superhero films for one reason - it asks the question, "what is a hero?" It has all the fight scenes, chases and gadgets you would expect in a superhero, specifically Batman, movie, but unlike most of these films, it goes in deep beneath the surface of action movie superficiality.

The Dark Knight is far from a perfect film. It has errors, plot holes, and technical annoyances throughout. One such plot hole occurs after Batman rescues Rachel from his penthouse apartment after his party is hijacked by the Joker. (This is not a spoiler as it was reveled in the trailer) After we see that Rachel has been rescued from plummeting to her death, we cut to the next scene. Presumably, Bruce Wayne believed that his guests would be able to fend off the Joker and company by themselves. It gets worse. When Harvey Dent recommends that Rachel go to the safest place in the city, she decides to go back to the Wayne penthouse. After all, it was only broken into by the Joker the night before. The same confusing, breakneck action choreography persists from Batman Begins, as does the lightning pacing that could potentially keep a step ahead of some viewers. Gordon, played by Gary Oldman, mumbles through many of his otherwise excellent lines, while Batman, played by Christian Bale, deliberately overplays his ultra-growly Bat-voice.

Even though this film has many errors, it is a significant improvement on Batman Begins.The returning principal actors are all excellent in this film, so I will focus on the new guys. Heath Ledger's performance (?) as the Joker is the best in the film. What you see in the trailer is a demented freak of a villian, and that is what he is in the film, but what you do not see is that he is a character of geniune humor and is the one who gets the most laughs. Aaron Eckhart also joins, and meshes perfectly with the existing cast. The character arc of his Harvey Dent lends the film a real sense of tragedy as he falls from being the hero to being the villian.

While The Dark Knight is a genuine comic book movie, with fights, gadgets, and witty repartee (especially between Bruce and his butler Alfred (Michael Caine), it has much deeper themes beneath the surface, the central theme being heroism. The film asks this question of Batman during his desperate fight against the Joker, and the answer is that he is farther from the definition of a hero and much closer to something else. Batman is a knight, and a dark one at that.

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