The Dark Knight! - 100% spoiler free

Well, I finally managed to take a bath and exit the house! Yay.. Sunlight.. Vitamin D! The medical benefits were fairly short lived though as I spent precisely 3.4 seconds in the sunlight, only to enter the car. Off to the theatre!

We reached 5 minutes late.. missed a couple of trailers and the initial cinema spiel. Nothing I really care for. I managed to rush to my seat with a box of caramel popcorn just before the movie began..

Now I don't want to spoil any part of the movie for anyone reading this, so I'm not going to talk about the storyline. I had seen the pre-release gimmicks that the producers had come up with; Gotham Times websites, Harvey Dent sites and others getting vandalized with bad jokes. Even the trailers were quite clear that this movie was not about Batman, it was about the Joker. I had always thought that the role of the Joker was overhyped.. especially after the untimely death of Heath Ledger. It looked like a ruthless capitalistic scheme to cash in on an unfortunate event. But after some research, I figured that the trailers and sites were already in operation before Ledger's death! Sad waste of a talented person.. What's more, they had already signed him up for the next movie!

I had not seen a single Heath Ledger movie before this one, though I know some of my friends who are hardcore fans! So when I heard everyone raving about his role in The Dark Knight, I didn't think too much about it.. In fact, I "wasn't so serious"! But all that changed when I actually saw the movie. Not surprisingly, being a Christopher Nolan creation, it was full of twists and turns, having a complex and intriguing plot.. which did not rely merely on a caped crusader flying across town, with explosions and bullets making up for the lack of substance in the script. Christian Bale was good as ever, switching between trillionairre (net worth more than the whole of South America - excluding the Columbian drug cartel) Bruce Wayne and the raspy voiced, possibly constipated Batman. Katie Holmes' absence wasn't really noticed.. she was probably too busy chomping down on minerals to 'cleanse' herself. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman play small, yet convincing parts. But without doubt, Heath Ledger shows us a whole new face (excuse the pun) of the Joker. He surely lived up to all the heaps of praise I had heard, making you flinch every single time he delivers a monologue. From flicking his sloppy hair to the side, to that sinister licking of lips which he did ever so often, he gave a new life to what was just a comic book character earlier.

Its not a real surprise that out of the 6 movies Christopher Nolan has directed this millennium, 4 are in the IMDB Top 250! I was a fan the day I watch Memento, but I guess there's much more to this guy than meets the eye.

The fact that The Dark Knight is #1 may have raised many eyebrows about the credibility of IMDB in the eyes of many, but there's nothing you can take away from the movie. Well, in short Heath Ledger has immortalized the Joker, that too from beyond the grave. While its a pity Ledger will not witness the role which is arguably his best performance, he certainly gave his fans the best parting gift one could.

May he rest in peace..