The Dark Knight (2008)

The Dark Knight (2008) Full Recap

A man in a dark coat stands on a Gotham Street corner in broad daylight holding a clown mask. A van pulls up and he climbs in with the others. Up on a rooftop, two more men shoot a cable across to the bank next door. Every one of them wears a clown mask. Inside the van, they argue about how many shares there are because the man who planned the job isn't coming.

The robbers storm the bank, shouting at everyone to get down. on the roof. One of them cuts the alarm line and as soon as he's done, his partner shoots him. Downstairs, the manager pulls a shotgun out of his desk and opens fire. "The bank holds mob money," he yells, and these clowns have no idea who they're robbing.

One robber drills into the vault. Another shoots him the moment the door swings open. Then, a school bus smashes straight through the wall, and the robber standing in its path goes down. The driver climbs out and the last robber left shoots him too. That leaves two of them. One turns his gun on the other and says the boss told him to kill the bus driver.

Wrong. The other clown fires first. The wounded manager lies on the floor, still shouting that criminals in this town used to believe in honor and respect. The last robber kneels over him and slowly pulls off his mask. His face is painted white with black eyes and a red smile cut into his cheeks.

This is the Joker himself. He stuffs a grenade into the manager's mouth and climbs into the bus with the money. That night, the mayor promises on TV that the city's war on crime is working. On a police rooftop, the big bat signal burns against the clouds. Lieutenant Jim Gordon stands next to it with one of his detectives.

She's been visiting her mother in the hospital. Gordon keeps staring at the sky, but nobody comes. He knows why Batman is busy. In a parking garage across town, a drug dealer in a burlap mask is selling to a gang with big dogs. It's the scarecrow. Then, a group of men dressed as Batman show up with shotguns.

Then, the Batmobile roars into the garage, and the real Batman steps out of the dark. The dogs hit him hard and sink their teeth into his arm. The scarecrow tries to get away in his van, but Batman jumps from the ramp above and crushes its roof. One of the fake Batman asks what gives him the right.

He wants to know. I'm not wearing hockey pants, Batman says. Then he drives off into the night. The next morning, police swarm the robbed bank. Gordon looks at a security camera picture of the Joker, who doesn't even bother to hide his face. The stolen cash came from the mob. Gordon has been marking their bills for weeks, and he's found five banks where they hide their money.

He wants to raid all five at once, but the new district attorney will want in. Batman's new hideout is a huge bare bunker under a container yard because Wayne Manor is still being rebuilt. Bruce Wayne sits there stitching up the dog bite on his own arm. Alfred, his loyal butler, tells him to know his limits.

Batman has no limits, Bruce says. Well, you do, sir, Alfred answers. On the monitors, Bruce is watching the city's new district attorney. Alfred dryly asks if he's interested in the man's character or in the woman he's dating. That woman is Rachel Daws, Bruce's oldest friend and the woman he loves.

She works in the DA's office now and her boss is also her boyfriend. His name is Harvey Dent. Harvey shows up late to court and flips a silver coin to decide who leads the case. On the stand, a witness is supposed to name the new head of the Falcone mob, Sal. Moroni. Instead, the witness pulls a gun and fires at Harvey's face.

The gun jams. Harvey yanks it away and punches him. After court, Harvey heads to Gordon's unit. He's heard the lieutenant is working with Batman, and he wants in on the bank raids. Harvey isn't happy about it since Gordon's unit is full of cops he thinks are dirty. Still, he agrees to get the warrants for all five banks.

He tells Gordon he's heard they have a nickname for him down at the unit. At Wayne Enterprises, the board is closing a big deal with a Chinese businessman named Lao. Bruce is sitting at the end of the table, sound asleep. Afterward, he tells Lucius Fox, who runs the company now, that he doesn't trust the deal.

Lao's company grows too fast, and his money must come from somewhere illegal. Then, Bruce asks him for a new suit, one that lets him turn his head. That night, Bruce runs into Rachel and Harvey at a fancy restaurant. Oh, they should. He's on a date with a Russian ballerina named Natasha.

Over dinner, Natasha asks how anyone could raise kids in a city that idolizes a masked vigilante. Harvey defends Batman, but he also says that you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Bruce is impressed. He offers to throw Harvey a fundraiser.

Meanwhile, Gotham's mob bosses meet in a restaurant kitchen. Lao talks to them from a TV screen because he's already left the city. The police know about the banks, so he's moved all their money to one secret place, and only he knows where it is. He's flying to Hong Kong, where the American police can't touch him.

Then someone at the table starts laughing. It's the Joker. When one of the gangsters gets up to grab him, the Joker pulls a magic trick with a pencil and the man drops to the floor. The Joker says the mob is scared to go out at night because of Batman. His plan is simple. Kill the Batman.

He wants half of all their money to do it. A gangster named Gamol jumps up and calls him a clown. The Joker opens his coat to show it's lined with grenades. Gamol puts a price on his head. Anyway, 500,000 dead and a million alive. Gordon raids the banks, but the vaults are almost empty.

Lao is already halfway to Hong Kong. They need Lao back, but China won't hand him over. If someone brings him back, Harvey says he'll get him to sing. Gordon looks up at the bat signal. Fox shows Bruce a new suit of armor. It's lighter and faster, and now he can turn his head. Bruce asks how he'd get out of Hong Kong by plane without the plane landing.

Fox remembers an old CIA program called Skyhook. Bruce also needs an alibi. He takes the whole Russian ballet company on a cruise on his yacht. At Gamble's pool hall, some men show up with a body in a bag. They say they've killed the Joker. Gamble walks over to collect and the Joker jumps up and holds a knife to his face.

He asks if Gamble wants to know how he got his scars. His father was a drinker, he says. One night, his dad went after his mom with a knife and then he turned on him. The Joker says the blade right at Gamol's mouth. Then he snaps a pool queue in half and throws it down in front of Gamal's three men.

There's only one spot on his team, so they're going to hold tryyouts. In Hong Kong, Fox flies in to meet Lao in his glass tower. Fox tells Lao the deal with Wayne Enterprises is off. Just accidentally wasting it. He has to hand over his phone at the front desk, and he leaves it there.

Out on a boat, he shows Bruce what it does. It sends out a sonar pulse like a submarine and maps every room in the building. That night, Batman stands on top of a Hong Kong skyscraper. He glides down to Lao's building and sticks small bombs on the glass. They blow out the windows and Batman crashes in, taking out the guards in the dark.

He grabs Lao, straps him into a harness, and sends a balloon up into the sky. A plane comes roaring in low and catches the line. The two of them are yanked off the roof and up into the air. Back in Gotham, the police find Lao tied up outside their headquarters. Rachel questions him.

He won't give back the money, but he offers something better. He handled the money for all the gangsters so he can give them up. Rachel sees what that means. If the mob put their money in one pot, they can all be charged as one big criminal gang. Gordon decides to keep Lao in his own cells instead of the county jail.

That night, police pick up Moroni at dinner and gangsters are arrested all over the city. The next day, a courtroom fills up with 549 criminals at once. Later, the mayor pulls Harvey aside. "The public likes him," he says. But every criminal, politician, and crooked cop in Gotham is going to come after him now.

"If they find anything on him, those criminals go free." One morning, the body of one of the fake Batman hits the window of the mayor's office. A joker card is pinned to it. At Bruce's penthouse, Alfred jokes that Bruce must be throwing Harvey's party to impress Rachel. Then the news plays a video the Joker made before he killed the man.

He films him tied to a chair, shaking. Batman must take off his mask and turn himself in. The Joker says, "Every day he doesn't, people will die." That night, Bruce throws the fundraiser at his penthouse. Bruce lands on the roof in a helicopter, late to his own party. He gives a big speech and says he believes in Harvey Dent.

Out on the balcony, Rachel can tell he wasn't joking. Bruce tells her the day he stops being Batman is coming soon. Harvey can be the hero, and he does it without a mask. Detective Anna Ramirez brings Gordon news from the lab. They found three kinds of DNA on the Joker card. They belong to a judge, to the police commissioner, and to Harvey Dent.

Police rush the judge into a car, but it blows up. The commissioner drops dead in his office after taking a drink. At the party, Harvey asks Rachel to marry him. She doesn't have an answer yet. Then the Joker's men break in downstairs and Bruce grabs Harvey and locks him in a closet.

The Joker strolls into the party with a shotgun and asks where Harvey Dent is. Then Rachel steps up. He pulls her close and starts another story about his scars. This time he says his wife was the one who got hurt and he cut his own face to make her smile. Batman bursts in and fights through the clowns.

The Joker smashes the window and throws Rachel out. Batman dives after her and they land on the roof of a car. Back at the bunker, Bruce says criminals aren't complicated. He just has to figure out what the Joker wants. Alfred tells him about a bandit he once chased in Burma. The man stole precious stones and then just threw them away.

Some men aren't looking for anything logical like money. Alfred says some men just want to watch the world burn. Two more men are found dead. One is named Harvey, the other one Dent, and the Joker's message is clear. Batman shows up and cuts a chunk of brick out of the wall with a bullet still in it.

He wants the fingerprint on it. Then Gordon gets news about the Joker's next target. The killer has put a death notice for the mayor in tomorrow's paper. At Wayne Enterprises, an accountant named Coleman Ree walks into Fox's office. He's found old plans for the Batmobile in the company files, and he wants $10 million a year to keep quiet.

"Good luck," Fox says. Down in the bunker, Bruce puts the bullet's broken print back together on a computer. "It matches a man with an apartment right on the route of the police parade. The next day, the police hold a parade for the dead commissioner. Gordon stands in the honor guard right next to the mayor.

Batman breaks into the apartment and finds real police officers tied up and blindfolded. Down on the street, one of the honor guards turns his head. He has a painted face. The fake guards fire and Gordon jumps in front of the mayor. He goes down. Harvey runs after one of the gunmen and drags him into his car.

At Gordon's house, his wife Barbara opens the door to the police. Ramirez breaks the news. Barbara steps out onto the porch and screams at the sky as if Batman could hear her. "You brought this on us," she yells. Harvey calls Rachel and tells her the Joker named her next. "She can't trust anyone in Gordon's unit, so she should go straight to Bruce's penthouse." Meanwhile, Batman finds at a crowded nightclub.

He drags him outside and drops him off a fire escape just high enough to break his legs. Batman has rules, but the Joker doesn't. If Batman wants him, he has to take off the mask and let the Joker come. In an alley, Harvey has the gunman from the parade tied up. He holds a gun to his head and flips his father's coin.

Heads. The man gets to keep his life. Tails, he doesn't. Batman stops him. If anyone saw this, he says every criminal Harvey put away would go free. Then he tells him to call a press conference tomorrow. No one else is going to die because of him. At the penthouse, Rachel finds Bruce ready to give himself up.

He reminds her of her promise. When he's done being Batman, she said they could be together. She tells him not to make her his one hope for a normal life. Later, Alfred helps him burn every file that could lead back to Fox or Rachel. Alfred begs him to hold on. Batman can be the outcast and make the choice nobody else can, he says, but Bruce has already made up his mind.

At the press conference, people shout that Batman should turn himself in. Bruce stands at the back, ready to step forward. Before he can, Harvey speaks. I am the Batman, he says. The police put him in handcuffs right in front of the cameras. Rachel is furious that Bruce let Harvey take the fall.

She gives Alfred an envelope and asks him to give it to Bruce when the time is right. Then she catches Harvey as they load him into a police van. He tells her it's a trap. The Joker will attack and Batman will catch him. When Rachel says he can't leave something like this to Chance, Harvey flips the coin and tosses it to her.

She turns it over. Both sides are heads. A long convoy of police vans carries Harvey across the city. A burning fire truck blocks the road. So, the convoy is forced down into a tunnel under the city. Then, a big truck rams one of the escort cars off the road. It's the Joker himself.

He fires at Harvey's van, then pulls out a rocket launcher. The Batmobile comes racing out of the dark and takes the rocket hit instead of the van. It crashes hard and catches fire. Then a motorcycle bursts out of the wreck. Batman rides it up into the streets after the truck. He shoots cables around the truck as it drives and the whole truck flips over onto its back.

The Joker crawls out of the wreck. He walks straight down the middle of the street, firing a machine gun at Batman. "Hit me," he keeps saying. Batman speeds right at him, then swerves away at the last second and crashes. The Joker walks over to pull off Batman's mask. Then one of the SWAT officers puts a gun to the Joker's head and takes off his helmet.

It's Gordon. We got you, he says. Harvey is free to go and the reporters call him a hero. The mayor tells Gordon he's the new police commissioner. That night, Gordon goes home to his wife and kids. He tells her he's sorry, but Harvey never makes it home. The detective who drove him has taken him somewhere else.

Down at headquarters, the Joker waits in a cell. Gordon goes in to question the Joker himself. He asks where Harvey is. Gordon walks out. The lights come on and Batman is standing behind the Joker. He slams his head into the table. The Joker laughs it off. He says he doesn't want to kill Batman.

To the people of Gotham, he says Batman is a freak like him and they'll cast him out the moment they don't need him. Batman grabs him and throws him into the wall. That only makes him happier. He tells Batman he'll have to choose. Harvey is in one building and Rachel is in another.

Across town, Batman runs for Rachel. Gordon runs for the other address. Rachel wakes up tied to a chair surrounded by barrels of gasoline. A timer is counting down. Across town, Harvey is tied up in the same kind of room. A phone lets them talk to each other. Harvey tries to keep her calm.

He rolls over and tries to break free, but his face drops right into the oil on the floor. At the station, one of the Joker's men, a sick prisoner, starts screaming that his insides hurt. Inside him is a phone bomb. It goes off and the Joker walks out with Lao. Batman, bursts into the building where Rachel should be, but he finds Harvey instead.

The Joker gave him the wrong address. Rachel tells Harvey that her answer is yes. Gordon gets to her building too late. It explodes. Harvey's building goes up, too, and the left side of his face catches fire before Batman drags him out. At the station, Gordon finds a hole in the wall and an empty cell.

The Joker let himself get caught so he could get to Lao. Back at the penthouse, Alfred opens Rachel's envelope. It's a letter for Bruce. She writes that she's going to marry Harvey. She loves him and she doesn't think the day she was waiting for will ever come. Bruce sits alone in the dark with his cowl in his hands.

He asks Alfred if he brought this on her. Alfred tells him the criminals were always going to fight back. Gotham needs him now. Bruce says she was going to wait for him. Alfred holds the letter and decides not to give it to him. Then Bruce asks about the bandit in Burma. Yes, Alfred says they burned the forest down.

On the news, Coleman Ree announces he'll reveal who Batman is on live TV. At the hospital, Gordon visits Harvey. He refuses all pain medicine and won't let the doctors fix his face. Harvey makes Gordon say the nickname they had for him back in internal affairs, Twoface. Gordon tells him he's sorry.

In Harvey's hand is his father's coin, and one side of it is now burned black. The Joker meets one of the mob bosses in a warehouse. He's got the mob's whole fortune piled up like a mountain and Lao is tied up on top of it. He pours fuel on the cash and sets it on fire with Lao still on top.

It's not about money, he says. It's about sending a message. Then the Joker calls into Reese's TV show. If Ree isn't dead in 60 minutes, he'll blow up a hospital. Gordon orders every hospital in the city emptied, starting with Gotham General. Bruce asks Fox to check the hospital lists for anyone close to Gordon's men.

Then he jumps into his sports car. The police lead Ree out of the TV station through an angry crowd and Gordon rides with him in the van. Bruce follows in his car. Out in the city, hospital patients are loaded onto buses. Inside the van, one of the cops checks his phone. His wife has just been taken into a hospital and he grips his shotgun.

In Harvey's hospital room, a nurse comes in and closes the curtain. It's the Joker in a nurse's uniform. Harvey sees him and tries to get free. The Joker tells him it was nothing personal. He didn't rig those barrels. It's the schemers, the mob, and the dirty cops who put Harvey here.

Then the Joker puts a gun in Harvey's hand and holds it to his own head. Harvey flips the coin. It comes up clean, so the Joker gets to live. On the street, a pickup truck charges at Reese's van, and Bruce swerves his own car right into its path. Gordon pulls the cop's gun away and runs over to check on Bruce.

Meanwhile, the Joker walks out of the hospital, pressing a detonator. The explosions go off one by one, and Gotham general falls apart behind him. He climbs onto a school bus and drives away. Gordon learns that a whole bus of people is missing. So is Harvey. Then the Joker sends the news a new video.

A TV anchor held at gunpoint reads his message. Come nightfall, Gotham belongs to him. And anyone who doesn't want to play his game should get out now. Panic hits the whole city. At a dark bar, Harvey finds Detective Wartz, one of the two cops who drove him away. Half of Harvey's face is badly burned.

He asks who picked up Rachel. Wartz swears he doesn't know. Harvey flips the coin. At Wayne Enterprises, Bruce shows Fox a secret room full of screens. He's turned every phone in Gotham into a sonar device so he can see the whole city. Fox agrees to help this one time. After that, he'll quit.

The bridges and tunnels are too dangerous, so people pack onto fairies to leave. Meanwhile, Harvey is in the back of Moron's car with a gun to his driver. tells him the Joker is just a mad dog and Harvey wants whoever let him off the leash. Then gives up the name of the other cop. It's Ramirez.

Harvey flips the coin for and wins. His driver isn't so lucky. Harvey fires and the car crashes off the road. Out on the river, both fairies suddenly lose power. The crews find barrels full of explosives under the decks and a detonator in a box. The detonator on each boat is wired to the other one.

Then the Joker's voice comes over the speakers. At midnight, he'll blow them all up, but if one boat presses its button, he'll let that boat live. Harvey finds Ramirez and makes her call Barbara. She tells Barbara that Jim wants her and the kids out of the house now. Barbara leaves with the kids.

Ramirez admits she drove Rachel to that building. The mob paid her mother's hospital bills. Harvey flips the coin and she lives, but he knocks her out. Batman finds the Joker in a building across from the river. Gordon has SWAT teams ready to storm it. Clowns are standing at the windows with guns holding the hostages from the hospital bus.

The Dark Knight (2008) Ending Explained

Batman asks Gordon for 5 minutes. Gordon gives him two. Inside, Batman sees through his sonar lenses that the clowns are actually the hostages. The real Joker gang is dressed as doctors and nurses. The SWAT team is about to shoot the wrong people. Batman stops them, ties them up, and clears the way.

Then Gordon gets a call from Barbara. Harvey has the kids. On the passenger ferry, people vote. 396 want to blow up the prisoners, and only 140 say no, but nobody is willing to push the button. On the prisoner ferry, a huge inmate walks up to the officer holding the detonator. He tells him to give it over and he'll do what the officer should have done 10 minutes ago.

Then he throws it out the window. The Joker sets his dogs on Batman, then beats him with a steel bar. Batman fires spikes from his glove and sends the Joker over the edge. Then he catches him with a cable. The Joker hangs upside down, laughing, and the fairies don't blow. He says Batman just won't kill him and he won't kill Batman because he's too much fun, but he still has an ace.

He took Gotham's white knight and brought him down to their level. Batman leaves him for the SWAT team. Gordon walks into the burnedout building where Rachel died. Harvey is there holding a gun to Gordon's family. He wants Gordon to feel what it's like to tell the person he loves most, that everything will be all right when it won't.

Then he points the gun at Gordon's son. Batman steps out of the shadows and tells Harvey the Joker chose him because he was the best of them. Harvey flips the coin for Batman and shoots him. He flips for himself and he lives. Then he flips for Gordon's son. Before the coin lands, Batman tackles him off the edge and the boy is saved.

Harvey hits the ground below and doesn't get up. Batman tells Gordon the Joker won. If the city learns what Harvey did, every criminal he put away will go free. So Batman takes the blame. He tells Gordon to say that Batman killed those people. He can be whatever Gotham needs him to be.

Gordon doesn't want to do it. Police dogs close in and Batman runs. Gordon's son asks why he's running. Because we have to chase him, Gordon says. Later, Gotham mourns Harvey as a hero, and Gordon smashes the bat signal with an axe. Alfred burns Rachel's letter, and Fox types in his name to shut the spying machine down.

As Batman speeds away on his bike, Gordon calls him a silent guardian, a watchful protector, a dark knight. Harvey Dent was the best man Gotham had, and it took the Joker a single night to break him. Bruce saw that the city still needed someone to believe in, so he let Gotham hate Batman to keep Harvey's name clean. Gordon smashed the light that used to call him, and Rachel's letter burned with the truth inside it.

Was Batman right to hide the truth, or did the people of Gotham deserve to know who Harvey really was?