By now you have already decided whether you are going to see Dark Knight or not and this review will likely not change your mind either way but I feel like I’d be doing something wrong if I didn’t add my two cents after catching the film last night since I’m a person who is very familiar with the Batman character as I grew up reading all the comics and graphic novels. If hip hop blogger knows Batman, it’s me (and maybe Illseed).

I’m not going to beat around the bush with this. I’m going to tell you right from the door that the movie is good. Actually its excellent. Almost everything is dead on from the camera angles to the script to the acting. There is very little to complain about (though there are some small things that bothered me which I’ll get to later).

Dark Knight does what no other comic book based film has done before. It makes the material very real and “relateable” yet stays very true to the source material it was based on (a comic book). For instance, though the Joker is not using poison gas flowers in his lapel or killer joy buzzers, many things are very much like the comics like the fact that he appears out of no where with no known origin or that he is obsessed with creating situations that will make normal people as mad as he is. Christopher Nolan has somehow made characters and a city (Gotham) that have been made very cartoonish in the past into something that seems like maybe, just maybe could happen in real life.

Getting back to the Joker, Heath Ledger has defined what the character is going forward. In the comics the Joker has never had a real personality with different writers often writing the character with extremes ranging from psychopathic killer to harmless clown. Heath Ledger somehow merges those two extremes into a character that is very scary, yet laughable. All the while transforming himself into something so far out there that you no longer see the actor at all, just the Joker. I wouldn’t be surprised is the Joker in the comic books started to act more like Ledger’s Joker from Dark Knight. He’s just that good in the role. Needless to say it is ashame that movie goers will not get a chance to ever see Ledger reprise his Joker role due to his untimely death. Early buzz was saying his performance was Oscar worthy and I’m not going to argue that assessment at all.

By no means do I want to give the impression the Heath was the only actor that did a good job. Everyone was good for the most part. Christian Bale seems very comfortable in his role as Bruce Wayne. As Batman though, sometimes I felt like he was trying too hard. As an example, Christian does this thing with his voice as Batman which makes him sound deeper and rougher. It works fine when the goal is to intimidate a criminal but in the parts where he is having regular conversations with others good guy characters, it sounds kinda silly. That along with a few other similar things brings me to my main peeve of the film, the Batman character just isn’t cool enough. Batman works best when he’s hiding in shadows and appearing out of nowhere to the point of almost seeming supernatural. There is some of that stuff in Dark Knight but just not enough if you ask me.

My major other issue with the film is the Harvey Dent storyline and how it seems very rushed towards the end of the movie. I don’t want to spoil anything in the movie but if you know anything about the Harvey Dent character in the comics you probably already guessed that Joker is not the only threat Batman has to deal with. Dent (played by Aaron Eckhart)has some major things happen to him that lead him to go through a big change. They probably could have waited until a third film to pull the trigger on that character yet they don’t and it becomes the only hiccup in an otherwise perfectly paced film.

In the end, Dark Knight is a masterpiece. An example of when the perfect script gets the perfect director who casts the perfect actors.

So my advice to everyone would be go see Dark Knight. See it twice. If you can, see it in IMAX (like I did). And when it comes out on DVD, make sure you add that to your collection.