The Dark Knight - The Ultimate Insane Clown Posse
Written: Jul 18 '08 (Updated Jul 18 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: smart story, great twists, Nolan's direction, Ledger's awesome performance
Cons: a little long
The Bottom Line: This is a must see. Ledger's performance is utterly amazing. Nolan's direction is awesome.
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| bilavideo's Full Review: The Dark Knight |
Most sequels suck. If they can't recapture the magic, the producers at least try to milk the market by either selling the same story flipped - or just bigger and louder. The Dark Knight does none of that. Writer/director Christopher Nolan (Following, Memento, The Prestige) takes the story to the next level. Drawing upon a universe known well to fans, he adapts it - with the help of brother Jonathan (Memento Mori) - to create a style that defies what has been the trend for at least a decade. Gone is the hypergothic expressionism of Tim Burtonia, where Gotham was so over-the-top it might have well been animated. But if Nolan has eschewed the weird and creepy aesthetics of the first two films, he has also repudiated the Joel Schumacher period, where Batman and Robin were just avatars in a mindless video game.
Batman, as Nolan sees him, inhabits a world somewhere between this one and the comic book. Gotham looks like New York City. This Batman can hang glide but when dogs bite him, he bleeds. Real-world problems pervade the story, including copycats and corruption on the inside. It's impossible to make a realistic story about a vigilante in a bat suit - at least not one that provides this level of spills and chills - but the shift toward realism (if it can be called that) gives Nolan's version more heft than its predecessors. Like 1979's Superman: The Movie, there's a neat fusion between the ordinary and the fantastic, one whose believability makes the exaggerations more stunning.
In this film's predecessor, Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) was the rich young heir to the family fortune started by Wayne Enterprises. Troubled by the death of his parents, a death he had blamed on himself, Wayne traveled the world, leaving behind the love of his life, Rachel (Katie Holmes) and Alfred (Michael Cain), a man who had raised him, the last link to his childhood. That film saw Wayne take his training in the far east, where he learned ninja-like skills from Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), a man who gave him a reason to live. Some of that film's best moments play out like Jedi training in Star Wars, or Neo's instruction in The Matrix. The message of that film - articulated in both the training sessions as well as the central conflict when Wayne went back - was to confront fear. "Why do we fall down?" Wayne remembers his father asking (a question reiterated by Alfred), "So we can get back up." Batman Begins is thus a film about a superhero forged out of fear - and the struggle to face it. Wayne takes the form of the bat for that is what scared him the most in his childhood. He takes the form to strike fear in the hearts of criminals.
At the end of Batman Begins, Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) worries about where all this will lead. Grateful for help in a world so full of corruption that not even the cops can be trusted, he still wonders if violence is the answer. In the film's closing moments, he gets Newtonian. If the Good Guys push, surely the Bad Guys will push back. As one side arms, the other side will rearm. On and on it will go. Where will it stop? He then produces this film's great cue: A playing card left behind by a guy calling himself "the Joker."
The Dark Knight explores that central question: "Where will it stop?" The Wayne Mansion, which was set ablaze in the previous film, has yet to be rebuilt (much like the WTC), forcing Batman to live and sleep at Wayne Enterprises. There, between Alfred and his version of Q, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), Batman has been staging a vigilante campaign that has, in fact, struck terror in the hearts of criminals. And maybe that's why it's time for the criminals to "push back." The one who suggests as much is The Joker (Heath Ledger, in a performance so nuanced and so thorough, the only indication that he's the one playing this part is his name on the credits). Looking like a demented Roy Wood, The Joker is a mystery man in a half-baked clownface. Unlike the Tim Burton film, where the Joker was played by Jack Nicholson, there's no clear motive for his chaos fetish. In fact, Nolan's version toys with the possibilities but forces upon us a cypher. As the man gives competing versions of his own backstory, we're forced to accept what we know: That this guy is one evil S.O.B. who plays by no rules and simply loves chaos for its own sake. As one bit of dialogue describes, he's a man who simply wants to watch the world burn.
I don't want to give away too much of the plot. I'll just mention two items - neither of which get you too far into the film, but which go a long way toward explaining its drift. For both Batman and the Joker, seismic changes are foreshadowed by the emergence of prosecutor Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). Dent wants to make a "dent" on crime. He figures out a way to do that by using the RICO act to go after hundreds of mobsters, big and small. The idea is to squeeze them, knowing that the little ones will have to roll over on the others, creating a critical mass where the criminals will turn on each other.
It's an ambitious proposal, one that catches the notice of both Batman and the Joker. As Rachel fawns all over Dent - like a college student at an Obama rally - Bruce Wayne can't help but feel competition for her affections. On the other hand, as his Batman persona acts as a wedge between him and her, Wayne has reason to hope that law and order - as personified by Dent - will make Batman obsolete. For the Joker, Dent is a sign that the criminals must push back. But in his view, the real culprit is not Dent but Batman. It's Batman who has inspired people like Dent, and it's Batman who needs to be drawn out and destroyed.
What follows is a showdown between Batman and the Joker, each trying to figure out the other's identity, and each using more than matched skills to get the job done. One of the interesting features of this film is the way outcomes are decided, again and again, not simply by the major players but by the loyalties and efforts they inspire. This is perhaps the first superhero film that focuses less on power than on influence. I'm not going to go so far as to say I liked it better than its predecessor, which was classic, but I definitely liked where it took the story. This is a cool roller-coaster ride - a popcorn adventure full of thrills and spills - but one that is helmed by a very bright writer-director. I can see Nolan making a third film (for a complete trilogy), but already his influence on the franchise is hard to miss. Finally, we've got a comic book franchise with a brain.
That said, I'd be remiss if I didn't dote, at least a little bit, on some of the great pleasures that await the viewer. Ledger's performance is - dare I say it? - Oscar-worthy. It isn't just that this is his last role. It's that he blows Nicholson's away - and Nicholson's was iconic. Whether by way of Nolan's adaptation or by a return to the source material, Ledger reimagines the Joker in ways that will have many viewers going back for second and third helpings - just to capture the nuances of his role. If Christian Bale was the star of Batman Begins, Ledger practically chews the scenery in The Dark Knight. I don't care if it sounds silly to say this of a comic book film: Ledger gave the best performance of the year.
This is not a perfect film. At 152 minutes, it feels a bit long, and possibly a tad convoluted. After so many reversals, it's possible to find yourself wanting to see some credits at least 20 minutes before they show up. Some of the color and relationships of the first film - between Bale, Holmes, Freeman and Alfred - continue but anemically. The Joker practically steals the show. On the other hand, the action kicks as moments of surprise put punch into the telling. In the meantime, you will see Batman bleed and even watch as characters question whether anyone should have so much power. Nolan stirs a lot of choice ingredients into this stew, enough to satisfy even the pickiest palate.
If this is the Empire Strikes Back of the Batman franchise, I can't wait to see the third installment.
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Action Movie
Viewing Method: Sneak Preview at My Local Theater
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Duration
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