Heath Ledger plays the Joker in Christopher Nolan's second take on the Batman franchise. Watch the trailer: http://thedarkknight.warnerbros.com/
The Dark Knight broke all records since its opening. We were able to catch it on Tuesday's Bargain Night/$5 and only because we purchased our tix an hour before the 7:00PM showing. The theater was packed but we arrived early to rush to claim good seats.
So how good was this movie? It's as good as you read or heard although we felt it dragged a bit near the end but that might be due to its excessive length. The cast is uniformly good and blends well with the impressive, moody visual details. Christian Bale is even better this time (and that's not a knock) as Bruce Wayne and you-know-who. Of course all the attention is on Heath Ledger's Joker, alas his final film and you've heard that he deserves an Oscar. So how good is he? Very good. It's easy to be cynical and say anyone can wear makeup and speak in a weird, menacing manner to achieve his performance. But it's much more than that. Just watch his body language and gestures as he intones his sarcastic lines. The total effect is creepy in the right dramatic way. He's so deep into his character, you forget the actorr behind it although I did try at times to see through his makeup. Is Ledger better than Jack Nicholson's Joker? Well that's a hard question. Both work well in both movies but each movie is different in design and execution. If you switched Jokers in both movie versions, I think they wouldn't work as well. I always felt Nicholson, as good as he was in Tim Burton's film, wasn't hammy enough where Ledger pulls out all the stops to expand his villainy. Nowadays Nicholson is too cartoonish/hammy in everything he does. And I also like TV's animated Joker, mellifluously voiced by Mark Hamill of Star Wars fame.
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