Review of The Dark Knight

When you heard that The Dark Knight had earned over $200 million in just five days, you know it has to be good. The sequel to ‘Batman Begins’ has the intense Christian Bale as the caped crusader again under the direction of Christopher Nolan, and it is every bit as good as advertised.

However, the true stars of the film are the villains. Batman's arch-nemesis the Joker makes a return to the big screen along with Two-Face. The deceased Heath Ledger was good but and Aaron Eckhart as ‘Two-Face’ Harvey Dent was nothing short of great.

The film starts with the Joker robbing a mob-owned bank as Batman and Lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman) teamed up with the new district attorney Harvey Dent to eradicate the mob. Batman feels that Harvey Dent could be the public hero Batman cannot. However Batman's love interest, Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal replacing Katie Holmes), is dating Harvey. Protecting Gotham comes first for the Batman though as Batman, Gordon, and Dent take it to the mob.

Desperate, the mob bosses hired The Joker to kill Batman. The Joker tells all of Gotham that if the Batman does not turn himself in to the police, he will kill more and more people each day. When the Joker begins killing public officials, including the police commissioner and the judge presiding over the mob trials, Batman decides its time to turn himself in. However, Dent refused to do so, believing that doing this would mean that the Joker had won. Hoping to draw the Joker out of hiding, Dent announced that he is the Batman. The Joker attempts to kill Dent, but Gordon and Batman stopped and arrest him. Gordon got promoted to police commissioner due to the arrest.

However the Joker had hired a group of corrupt police officers to kidnap Dent and Dawes beforehand and they took them to separate warehouses rigged with explosives. The Joker revealed that Dawes and Dent have been taken to opposite sides of the city, and asked Batman to choose who to save. Batman decided to save Dawes, while Gordon and the police headed after Dent. However the locations were switched, sending Batman after Dent and Gordon after Dawes. With the help of a bomb planted at the police station, the Joker escapes from the police. Batman managed to save Dent, but Dent sustains severe burns on the side of his face. Dawes died. In the hospital, Dent went mad with grief over the loss of Dawes. The Joker frees Dent from the hospital and convinces him to exact revenge on the cops, mobsters and Gordon.

While Harvey "Two-Face" Dent confronts the corrupt cops and the mobsters one by one, Batman locates the Joker and defeats him. Defeated by Batman, the Joker reveal his ‘ace in the hole’, Harvey Dent. Batman finds Two-Face in the warehouse where Dawes died, along with Gordon and his family. After a shot fight, Dent lies dead after falling from the building. Batman and Gordon realize the fallout the city would suffer if Dent's acts of murder became known, so Batman convinces Gordon to blame him for all the murders.
As the movie ends, a manhunt is issued for the Batman.

Dark, grim and great, that is ‘The Dark Knight’.

Although called the ‘The Dark Knight’, I feel Harvey Dent was the star of the movie. The engrossing tragedy of the character was what made this movie tick. As I said earlier, Aaron Eckhart was nothing short of great. Christian Bale as the angst-filled hero and Heath Ledger as the crazy maniacal Joker were very good, but Eckhart portrayal of Harvey Dent was the extremely moving. When he went mad at the end, you can truly understand why. The Oscar nomination should go to him as I thought he overshadowed the rest of the cast.

Some parts of the movie are confusing, like Batman’s final fight with the Joker, but on the whole ‘The Dark Knight’ is a great movie which will haunt and move you. Watch it!

Review of Kung Fu Panda

I will admit this; the idea of a kungfu fighting panda is a winner. So it’s no surprise that I liked Kung Fu Panda.

The animated film from DreamWorks Animation is about Po, a bungling panda who aspires to be a great kung fu warrior. Of course, no one think this is possible as
1) he is fat
2) he is clumsy
And 3) as the bad guy said, “He is a PANDA!”

The story itself is pretty simple and straightforward. The tortoise Master Oogway has a premonition that the evil snow leopard Tai Lung will escape from prison and return to threaten the Valley of Peace. Oogway orders a formal ceremony to choose a mighty Dragon Warrior who can defeat Tai Lung. Everyone assumes that one of the Furious Five - Tigress, Monkey, Mantis, Viper, and Crane will be chosen for this honor, but Oogway choose Po and gave Po to his own protégé, the red panda Master Shifu, for training.

Master Shifu was less than happy about this as he was the one who had trained the Furious Five. Revolted that Po was chosen instead of his own student, Shifu attempts to make him quit by berating him endlessly. Although he becomes aware of Shifu's intentions, Po endures the abuse willingly for the dream to become something more than the failure he thinks he is. At the same time, Po endears himself to the Five with his good cooking and sense of humor.

Tai Lung finally escaped from prison. While the Five rushed to intercept Tai Lung, Shifu discovers a way to train Po; his love for food! Shifu leads Po to the countryside for an intensive training regime in which Po is offered food as a reward for learning his lessons. With breakfast, lunch and dinner at stake, Po swiftly becomes a skilled kungfu master and defeat Tai Lung in the final showdown.

As I said, the story is nothing you haven’t seen before in countless kungfu movies. What Kung Fu Panda got really right was the humor. The interplay between Po and Master Shifu was excellent and the idea of a big, fat panda training to be a kungfu master was milked for all its worth.

Having said that, some parts of the movie was disappointing. I would like to have seen more of the Furious Five; Jackie Chan had all of 2 lines in the whole movie. The rest of the Five didn’t fare much better.

Overall, the movie was great. With the success of the film, DreamWorks has already outlined a plan for six Kung Fu Panda films. Six films seen like overkill to me but if they all live up to the overall performance of the initial film, count me in.

Review of Wanted

An action film based loosely on the comic book miniseries Wanted by Mark Millar, the movie Wanted is director’s Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch) Hollywood debut.

The word here is ‘loosely’. If you had read and loved the miniseries, then you are going to be disappointed at this movie. Director Timur Bekmambetov basically kept the names of the characters from the miniseries…and nothing else.

Whereas the comic book ‘Wanted’ was set in a world where evil supervillians had won and ruled the planet, the movie ‘Wanted’ had a thousand-year-old secret society of super assassins called ‘The Fraternity’ who are out to maintain order in the world. Got that? If your mind can get around this plot difference, you might like the movie.

The movie is full of thrilling stunts and action scenes which will rival anything you will found in any other summer blockbuster and Bekmambetov kept them coming. At no point did I find the movie slow because car chases and shootouts came one after another. Look out especially for an excellent one at the start when Wesley and Fox first meet.

The one thing I will say the film had absolutely right was the cast. James McAvoy as Wesley Allan Gibson and Angelina Jolie as Fox were perfectly cast in their role. Angelina Jolie has to be the hottest religious fanatic ever to be seen on screen. Morgan Freeman as Sloan, the leader of The Fraternity, was excellent in the first half of the film. However in the second half, I had a hard time picturing him as a man who was so afraid of his own death that he would betrayed everything he own dear just to survive, but that could just be me.

While I dislike the way the story deviated so strongly from the comic book, the movie is still a highly entertaining action film. Watch it if you are looking for a mindless action flick, just don’t read the comic book first.