I was a little bit worried about my expectations about it, because of the hype surrounding it. I've found - like a lot of people I know have - that if a film is too hyped before its release, it becomes very difficult for it to live up to the pre-fab expectations generated for it. This goes double for movies which come originally from books that many people have read. Not that the Dark Knight comic book was necessarily great literature, but you get the point. I sometimes go for movie reviews to a site called Rotten Tomatoes. If you haven't already heard of this site, it's a great resource. They don't really do movie reviews themselves; instead, they function as an aggregator. They survey film critics from across the country, from the popular (Ebert) to the obscure (your local paper), and they average how many overall positive reviews a particular movie receives versus how many overall negative ones. This becomes a percentage "freshness" score, and to be considered "fresh," a movie has to get either 60% or 65% (can't remember) of reviewers across the country generally favorably reviewing it. Anything less is "rotten."
Anyway, The Dark Knight received a 94% "freshness" rating. 94%!! I almost didn't believe it. Usually, that kind of unanimous positive review only comes about through mass-delusion (remember when people all went simultaneously insane for the Macarena? LOL), so I worried about how accurate that was - and how well I'd like the film.
I needn't have worried.
If you're one of the few people left who hasn't seen this movie, go rent it. Now. If it's still playing, by some odd chance, at a theater near you, then go see it on the big screen. Because unless you absolutely loathe any sort of "action" movie at all (in which case you should probably stay away), this film will more than satisfy you. Anyone who grew up in the '70s or '80s (or heck, even the '60s) will be familiar with Batman. Even if you never read the comic books, you know the story from the cheesy old Adam West/Burt Ward TV show. But if you've read the Dark Knight comic book series, then you know what a good job was done in that story of redefining the character. And you won't be disappointed by the screen-adaptation which was done by the gang responsible for the movie version. I won't go into plot or anything else, because there's not much point: you either have read the Dark Knight (in which case, you already know it), or you haven't, in which case, you'll enjoy it more without spoilers from me - or even description. Let me just say that after having seen it, I'm not at all surprised that it got 94% of America's film critics (more or less) to review it positively. It could easily stand on its own as a single-episode crime/hero film if you've never seen/heard/read anything Batman-related before. Just go see it, unless your idea of great cinema is "My Dinner With Andre."
