The Dark Knight Review

If there's one thing about the Dark Knight, it is fat. The amount of stuff crammed into it is enough to make it seem horrendously obese.But don't judge it by its fatness, its a very entertaining movie bogged down by excess. The first half-hour is in fact, very boring and I was beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about. Unfortunately, the amount of action they manage to cram into the next two hours requires that kind of set- up in order to remain comprehensible, which, thankfully, it does. After getting all of its characters introduced, Dark Knight launches a thrill ride of darkness, death and irony. Heath Ledger as the Joker dominates every scene he's in and you can't really see enough of him, and the effects used to create "two face" Harvey Dent are both impressive and gruesome.Unfortunately, the incredible tension created by the joker, and the excellent subplot of Harvey Dent, are marred by a fairly unnecessary beginning, with long scenes used to set up very brief, albeit interesting scenes later in the film. None of this stops the Dark Knight from being entertaining, but steers it out of masterpiece territory. Another bad point is its uneven pacing. After about an hour and a half, Nolan gets the pacing down, creating a fast paced action film with some excellent moments providing commentary on human nature, with one of my favorite scenes being one where the Joker puts a detonator on two boats, one full of prisoners and one filled with refugees, and asks one to blow up the other before he destroys both. In contrast, however the "crime drama" parts are painfully slow. All in all, some poorly paced and largely unnecessary segments can't drag the Dark Knight down, but keep it from being the fast-paced super powerful film it has been hailed as. Score: 7.9 out of 10