In The Heath Of The Knight | Heath Ledger wows the critics from beyond the grave as The Joker in The Dark Knight

James Rocchi, Cinematical | “The Dark Knight may be based on a comic book, but it’s a real movie made by real talents—exciting, engaging, gorgeously crafted, and thematically rich. Nolan’s set himself up for a third film, of course, and even with Ledger’s passing removing the possibility of his returning to the series, there are still plenty of places Nolan might take Batman; the confidence, vision, and skill he’s brought to The Dark Knight make that something to be hoped for.” 

Paul Moore, SpoutBlog | “Please, allow me to clear my head of my immediate reactions: The Dark Knight is the shit! It is so awesome I can not stare into the light of its awesomeness without seeing spots. Better than I hoped—and I was hoping for a lot—there were even points where I sat looking at the screen thinking, ‘Can Christopher Nolan possibly sustain my amazement any further?’ The answer: Yeppers, and with a choke-on-its-way-down ending. I’ll shut off the blathering even though I want to keep going.”

David Edelstein, New York | “Nolan appears to have no clue how to stage or shoot action. He got away with the chopped-up fights in Batman Begins because his hero was a barely glimpsed ninja, coming at villains from all angles in stroboscopic flashes. There are more variables here, which means more opportunities to say, ‘What the fuck just happened?’ I defy you to make spatial sense of the early scene in which Batman battles faux Batmen, gangsters, and the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy in a cameo that comes to nothing). If you can, move on to Level 2, diagramming the ‘Bat-Tank versus Joker-Truck versus cop car’ chase. Then, finally, take the Ultimate Challenge: following the climax with Batman, the Joker, more faux Batmen, decoy hostages dressed as clowns, a SWAT team, and Morgan Freeman’s Lucius with some kind of sonar monitoring gizmo that tracks all the parties on video screens. Actually, Freeman looks like he knows what’s going on. Maybe the sequence plays well in sonar.”