Movie Review

The movie I have selected that depicts leadership in many ways, both good and bad, is

The Dark Knight. This is one of my all time favorite movies due to the intricacy of its plot, and

the in depth development of each and every important character.

The Dark Knight is about a city called Gotham, made to replicate New York City or

Chicago, and the city is bombarded with constant organized crime. In the beginning of the

movie, a brand-new criminal mastermind is introduced, the Joker. He spearheads crime in the

city from here on out, but not for money or glory, just the madness in his mind. He tracks down

and kills many prominent public figures, while using blackmail and threats to terrify the whole

city.

On the contrary, you have the Batman. Batman is a vigilante that stands for good and

takes crime-fighting into his own hands. This does not sit well with the whole city, as most

people think he causes more damage than he actually prevents. He makes the Joker his true

enemy throughout the movie that he has to battle, and it wears him down throughout. The

Batman leads a double life, as he is a very affluent and prominent figure in the public eye. His

character lives in a penthouse that overlooks the city, and the headquarters for his Batman

identity are belowground in a building that is old and run down. He uses top of the line

technology to build his suit with the help of his butler and assistant, Alfred.

In between the absolute evil and absolute good in the movie, you have a mixture of both

with the character of Harvey Dent. Harvey is a political and public figure in the city of Gotham,

who makes it his personal mission to fight crime in the city, but on the legal side of things in a
court of law. However, despite fighting for the good people and personally hating the Joker,

Harvey dent suffers a heartbreaking injury along with the death of the woman he loves, who

formerly was involved with the Batman’s real character, Bruce Wayne. Dent gets half of his face

burned completely off in a huge fire caused by the Joker, which was completely intentional. This

move by the Joker was to turn Harvey Dent into an evil man with hatred in his heart, and to have

him somewhat join forces with the Joker. It completely worked. He then became Harvey Two-

Face.

The movie ends with someone of a vague sense of closure for all of the characters. The

Joker is stopped by the Batman, Harvey Two-Face is killed by the Batman, and Batman himself

is last seen driving off into the night on his motorcycle after stopping yet another crime in the

midst of the Gotham City police chief.

Now, while I gave a summary of The Dark Knight, I really tried to highlight three

characters in particular, and each for a different reason, but all pertaining to leadership. These

three characters were leaders of men and women, but not always in the best possible way.

First off, we have the Joker. He is one of the more effective leaders I have ever

witnessed, in a movie situation or not, but he really knows exactly what he is doing. First and

foremost, some of the people that he leads are people that are in dire need of some sort of leader,

and are the sort of people that will do whatever that leader says to do. I’m talking about the

people that he helped to escape from the Gotham City mental asylum. These people did anything

that the Joker instructed and had a great time doing it. The other people that he sort of led were

the mafia members. They didn’t follow his orders at first until he killed a few members, and then

they did some of his bidding, and it was completely based off of fear.
 The Joker’s leadership skills are diverse. Some he led with ability to control with

brainwash, or just lack of any judgement at all from their part, since they were diagnosed insane.

The others he led, followed him through the use of fear as a tactic. We have seen examples of

these styles of leadership all throughout history.

Next, we have the Batman. The Batman didn’t want to lead anybody at all. His line of

work was dangerous. However, there were plenty of Batman copycats, especially in the

beginning of the movie, until the Joker came into power and everyone became terrified. People

began to turn on Batman because the Joker was killing so many people until Batman exposed his

true identity. The Batman was the kind of leader who strictly led by example, and only did what

he thought was for the greater good of Gotham City. Maybe it wasn’t the best way to lead, but

that is how most “vigilantes” tend to go about their business and leading strategies.

Last, we have Harvey Dent, or Harvey Two-Face. Harvey was the perfect leader at first.

He was a complete hero in the public eye. He was taking down mafia members left and right, and

doing all of the right things. Harvey even confessed to being the Batman, a character who was

hated at this point in the movie. He confessed even though it wasn’t him so that the Joker would

stop killing people, but the joker knew it wasn’t him. This just goes to show how great of a

leader Harvey was. Everything goes downhill after the Joker burns his face off and kills his wife

in the fire and building explosion. After this, Harvey isn’t much of a leader anymore.

These three leaders represent leading for complete evil, leading for complete good, and

leading on your own, with good intention but sometimes bad outcomes.