Published: August 01, 2008 03:17 pm            

At the movies...

The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight



So the day that everyone has been waiting for has finally arrived. Few movies have gar-nered as much pre-release hype as The Dark Knight. Aided by a strong armada of critical acclaim mixed with an apprehensive fascination with Heath Ledger’s new Joker model, this movie promises to be one of the highest-grossing films of the summer, if not all time.

Now, a little history. As soon as the first of the new Batman movies finished and the Joker card was flipped––effectively setting up the next film––I let out a long, agitated sigh and said, “They’ve got to be kidding. You’re going to attempt to stand toe to toe with Jack Nichol-son? Good luck.” I mean, honestly, no matter what they did critics and Batman fans alike were going to compare the two performances. I’m not a betting man, but if I had to wager a sum of money on one actor over another, Nicholson is going to get my green almost every time.

So imagine my surprise when Heath Ledger, who had a decidedly mediocre body of work, stormed onto the scene and gave one of the most chilling and horrific performances I’ve ever seen. It would be hard for me to pick between the two versions of the Joker. They’re both crafted for two different visions, and I’ll take my psychos any way I can get them. But as far as I’m concerned anyone who can so drastically alter the approach the Joker with as much success as Ledger did deserves an award––or several. His character lacks the roundedness and backstory of its predecessor, but every time he appears on screen, you get an uncanny chill. Spectacular.

But if The Dark Knight were as unstoppable as Achilles of the Trojan War, then no re-view would be complete without talking about its heel. For as much as the movie does right, it does one thing wrong, and it just so happens to be the very thing that gutted Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins. When Tim Burton took on the project of darkening the Batman character back in the late eighties, he did a very smart thing. Instead of giving us an origin story filled with melo-drama and periods of reflection, we simply start in the middle of the action. He constructed a gothic fairy tale world of sorts, with good on this side, evil over here, and Batman in the middle. Nobody asks why Batman is the way he is, and for good reason. There’s no logical explanation as to why a billionaire who wants to fight crime would dress up in a bat suit and stalk thugs in the dark, except one. Mental instability.

Fast forward to Nolan’s incarnation. Batman Begins claimed to be a darkening reboot of the series, and while it was indeed darker than the final two installments of the previous fran-chise, it didn’t really surpass Burton’s vision in many respects. Nolan and his screenwriter made the drastic error that Burton sidestepped. He dared to ask the question, “Why become Batman?” And as it turned out, it was an utter disaster. Batman Begins was an atrocious film. A weighty script spoon-fed viewers its dime store philosophical exposé, Bale slaughtered his Batman char-acter with overacting (though his Wayne was second to none), the movie offered no compelling villains, and the climactic clash of good and evil was so utterly over the top that nobody in good conscience could point to this as the “serious” and “gritty” remake viewers had been craving. Burton created a dark fairy tale––what he does best and what Batman really is; Nolan went half way with tropes like the Narrows and a sleazy Gotham landscape, but then he demanded the viewers sit around and watch the characters try to rationalize why Batman was the best solution for a city ridden with crime. That’s a lot like saying “I just had to kill my sister, your honor, be-cause the dogs were barking every night and I couldn’t sleep.” Batman isn’t the best solution. In fact he’s not even among the better ones. If Bruce Wayne wanted to put a dent in crime, he should shell out some of his billions to hire a crack team of assassins to wipe out every mobster in town. When you can outspend your opponents a thousand to one, you’re in pretty good shape.

But yes, if the movie has a flaw, it is a continuation of this needless chatter. For most of the movie the Joker exists much like Anton Chigurh exists in No Country for Old Men. He’s evil. Pure and simple. You don’t need a rationale because even if you had one it wouldn’t justify his behavior. But by the final quarter of The Dark Knight the audience bib has come out and the characters once again go back to talking about the movie’s subtler message––which means, dear reader, that all subtlety goes flying right out the window. I don’t need my heroes to explain why they’re heroes. I don’t need my villains to explain why they’re villains. I don’t need them to talk about the dichotomy of good and evil, justice and injustice, anarchy and peace, or the place of a Dark Knight in a world both good and evil. I need them to tell a story. I’ll sort out the rest for myself over coffee.

Were it not for this flaw and a few other structuring issues, this movie would have been more than it is. It may indeed be the best superhero movie ever made. It may indeed win awards. It may indeed send shock waves through the movie business. But it’ll never be the timeless masterpiece it was very close to becoming.



Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 152 minutes

My Rating: 9/10

Recommended? Oh yeah.

        

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