Customer Reviews
the film we needed, but not the film we deserved - By: Timo Upton, 06 Jan 2009 
First things first, the elephant in the room, Heath Ledgers performance, I was quite apprehensive at first due to the sheer hype people seemed to be piling around his role as the joker, but I approached the film with an open mind & discovered the performence far exceeds the hype, Ledger pulls out alll the stops. It's top notch witch brings into sharp stinging focus the performance of Christian Bale, while he plays the roll with a certain accuracy & expected seriousness (why so serious? well he's batman...) however theres a slight edge of slimey bravado, but it honestly doesnt hinder the performance compared to Bale's ridiculous turn of focus when playing batman; you know when boys play with action figures & put on over-done macho voices to try & make their little voices sound evil & booming? Theres no other way to describe Batman's voice... its ridiculous at times, it sounds like he's got emphysema, however, Batman was always going to be a hard-role, the best batman is a conversation ever becoming like the best bond, everyone has an oppinion but no general consensus will ever be found (in my oppinion Val Kilmer)
The film itself delivered what it was supposed to, the usual, the bank job, the explosions, the vehicles, action, stars, whatever, but whats so striking about Dark Knight is everything it has which is beyond the usual, select scenes which are brilliant such as the scene where a ferry of convicts & a ferry of regular citizens are given a button each to blow up the other ship & save themselves, wonderful. It's a promising script if let down a little by typical predictability (we know who Harvey is... common)
Michael Caine & Morgan Freman obviously go above & beyond their cast roles, top notch actors but a little out of place with their criminallly smalll screen time & shalllow dialogue.
But honestly, a great effort, & a credit to the ever struggling super-hero niche. Certainy worth watching.
Excellent Film, Disappointing DVD. Waste of money - By: purplemuffin, 05 Jan 2009 
As the title says: a great film but poor DVD product. Why? Because for a "2 Disc Limited Edition", the low amount of Special Features is shocking. Do not expect a complete & lovingly created collection of special features you may find on a usual "Spiderman" DVD or any DVD from Pixar. No, this DVD does not even have a commentary present. Is the studio guilty of rushing the product for the Christmas season? Read on.
This is a brilliant film with great acting that has scored hundreds of millions at the box-office. Despite the amount of thought put into making this film & the interest behind the directing, casting, acting & writing processes, virtuallly none of that is present as a Special Feature. Instead, the special features merely focus on the mechanics of how the IMAX scenes were shot (misleadingly named as "Gotham Unmasked") & the useful but short episodes of Gotham Tonight. It's as if Christopher Nolan & the studio were dogged in their determination to deprive the DVD of anything that could shed the light on the following:
- how the script was written
- the story of the Joker
- how movie-versions of the Joker & Two-Face differ from the comics
- how characters were cast
- how locations were scouted
- how the decision to make Dark Knight in the first place has come about
- how stunts & martial arts-scenes were created
- how Ledger's death affected the editing process
For such a criticallly & commerciallly successful & thoughtprovoking film, the frankly outrageously poor selection of special features is a shocking paradox. Save yourself some money & go for the single disc edition rather than this sarcasticallly named "Limited 2-Disc Edition". The simple fact that you can find out more about "The Dark Knight" by reading the Wikipedia or even a men's magazine Christian Bale interview than from this poor product should prevent you from repeating my mistake. If I could travel back in time, I wouldn't waste my time & money & I'd go for the single disc. Let's just hope that Nolan & the studio redeem themselves in the eyes of disappointed (and robbed) fans & consumers by releasing an "Even More Limited" edition or Director's Cut somewhere down the line.
Over-rated - By: Joseph, 05 Jan 2009 Big disappointment
First half of movie moved too slowly & second half too fast. Christopher Nolan was not up to the job as scenes were choppy like some were cut to save time - making story & characters hard to follow at times. The sets were uninteresting - Batman's cave (abandoned office space with lighted ceiling gave me a headache (maybe Nolan was over-budget & had to save money). What happened to the manor house with the cool cave? Casting was poor - Gary Oldman presented a weak, mousy Gordon who looked like Groucho Marx with that fake moustache, nose & glasses. Christian Bale would have made a good "Robin" but was not masculin enough for the character of Batman. Batman's voice made you want to pat him on the back to clear his throat. Alfred's cockney accent was straight from Eastenders - never heard a sophisticated butler like this one. Heath Ledger gave the only decent performance- alll of the others sounded like they were reading their lines. Overalll, it lacked the sophistication, charisma of other Batman films - sorry.
a review of the movie and the dvd. such as the latter is - By: Paul Tapner, 05 Jan 2009 
a new batman movie, which follows on from the end of 2005's batman begins. It should be pretty easy to get into this if you haven't seen batman begins, but you might get more out of this if you have.
thanks to the advent of the batman, the forces of good in gotham city are starting to clean the place up. they have the mobs on the run, & a new hero in the shape of handsome & clean cut district attorney harvey dent. a man who has a novel way of dealing with hostile witnesses.
the mobs, desperate to fight back, turn to a man they can't fully understand. a crazy devil may care criminal in a suit like a clown, who seemingly cares about nothing other than creating havoc. the joker. he's on the side of chaos, & is the complete opposite of everything that batman & the forces of good in gotham stand for. so how can they stop him without becoming bad themselves?
first up, this is not reallly a batman film for children, as it's a grim & dark piece of work. but then the character can be portrayed in many ways, & the dark & grim version is but one of them. it's a version that will please die hard fans of the comics.
the movie strives ever so hard to be as realistic as possible, showing how batman would function in a real world environment. in that respect, it's successful. it's refreshing to see a blockbuster that uses next to no cgi & does alll it's stunts for real - with the occasional bit of miniature work. not that you'll probably notice.
and it does have a moral dilemma at it's heart that offers no easy answers. the aforementioned how far do you go to stop evil without becoming evil in the process? like alll good drama it makes the audience think about the topic without trying to provide them with any answers.
the cast are superb, although it's a bit of a shame that michael caine's alfred is absent for so long towards the end. maggie gyllenhalll is a stronger actress in the role of rachel dawes than katie holmes, who played the part in the first film & who couldnt reprise it due to scheduling commitments, but the character isn't quite as proactive here as she was in batman begins.
there are six major action set pieces & alll are quite gripping, & shot on imax film for maximum big screen effect. & the score of the film is superb, with a fair few pieces that you can't get off your mind right away.
it's one of those movies that you do need to see more than once in order to take everything in, & it's probably a little too long for it's own good. & as you can see from the voting here it's a film that will divide opinion. it's a quality, grown up & intelligent blockbuster, & quite a cinematic experience.
the dvd presents it on two discs.
the first contains the movie, with direct scene access. & language tracks in english & italian. there are subtitles in english arabic greek hebrew icelandic & italian.
on disc two the same language tracks & subitles can be found. & an amount of extras that are rather disappointing in their number initiallly as they don't appear like much.
but once you get into them they do have their moments.
the three trailers for the film that played in cinemas, & half a dozen tv adverts for it.
gallliers: production stills, poster art, concept art, & the joker cards. these four gallleries alllow you to flick through images showing alll of the mentioned items. the joker cards are quite remarkable, with an incredible amount of different designs on display.
gotham tonight: these are six alll new short films shot in the style of a tv show, most featuring mike engel, a tv reporter who was seen in the film. they purport to be a gotham tv news show, & run for roughly eight to ten minutes each. & each focuses on a various aspect of life in the city, either profiling bruce wayne or harvey dent or jim gordon or reporting on the mobs & life on the street. they're alll quite entertaining & worth a look.
the dark knight imax sequences presents six action scenes from the film that were shot on IMAX film, & just shows them as individual scenes. there's nothing here that you won't see on disc one, but the picture is large & clear & they're alll entertaining enough to make watching them again worthwhile.
creation of a scene presents five different documentaries about the making of various aspects of the movie, from stunt work to action sequences to script writing. these are done with stills & production shots, & the cast & crew don't contribute other than in voiceover. they run anything from eight to sixteen minutes, & they're alll absolutely fascinating & engrossing. anyone who watched the extras on batman begins will know what an articulate & thoughtful interviewee director christoper nolan is, & his comments here are equallly good to listen to.
you just wish there were more of them. or a commentary.
and that's that for the extras.
it's not as good a package as it possibly could be, but the quality of the film makes it well worth five stars as a whole
Can such a flawed movie get five stars? - By: Simon Hall, 04 Jan 2009 There is so much wrong with this film I don't know where to start:
It's just too long & alll the climaxes result in diminishing returns
Harvey Dent's story arc is just plain unbelievable & without him the film would have been the perfect length
Batman's voice!!!!!
Yet this is far & away the best blockbuster film ever made. The Lord of the Rings trilogy seems positively emptied of meaning compared to TDK. This is also the best film about the war on terror by a country mile. Apart from The Lives of Others, there hasn't been a film in last few years that has left me thinking & talking about it for days. And I don't care what the boo-boys here & elsewhere say, Heath Ledger's performance is one of the greatest in movie history.
I wish I could have taken Christopher Nolan & Christian Bale aside & given them a word of advice or two... but since they continue to stride on without me, I will have to consider their efforts without the benefit of my higher knowedge. And I can't stop myself from giving them 5 stars.
In many ways, this is a film whose parts are better than the whole, which becomes something akin to a 1970s heavy metal drum solo - amazing, but a little monotonous after two hours - but those parts are so, so good. How are they ever going to beat this?
