The Dark Knight Review
by Jerry Saravia (Faust668 AT msn DOT com)December 13th, 2008
THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
RATING: Four stars
"Batman Begins" was the best Batman film ever made, with a clear emphasis on who Batman and was and the dual identity of its nocturnal hero and his wealthy playboy counterpart. "The Dark Knight" has different concerns and strengths and it is probably as good as "Batman Begins" if it were not for a little less emphasis on Batman/Bruce Wayne than I would have liked.
Christian Bale is once again the Batman and Bruce Wayne, this time sensing that his days as a crime-fighting hero are possibly numbered. In the truly effective opening sequence, we see a bank robbery with its robbers wearing ugly clown masks and betraying each other by killing each other (their escape, hosted by the Joker, is nifty). Batman finds that his old foe, Scarecrow, and others are trying to do Batman's work, to no avail. A gray-haired crime lord (Eric Roberts) seems to have the entire city of Gotham on his payroll, but he faces a new threat - a malevolent, ugly freak with a white plastered face and a bloody smile, the Joker (played by the late Heath Ledger). This Joker is not a Jack Nicholson or a Cesar Romero impersonation - he is a tongue-flipping sociopath who thrives on chaos and destruction. He is not really witty and he's unclean, unsafe and a sheer monster who freely kills a gangster by impaling his head with a pencil. This man is so freakish, so nasty, so inhuman that you'd swear it was someone else under the makeup and not the handsome, stoic Heath Ledger. Yet Ledger lends a shred of wit to it. I love the moment when he confronts the city's gangsters and says, "Here is my card," as he flings a Joker card at them.
What can Batman and ambitious D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and the sensitive police commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) do to fight this anarchic personality? Not much. The corruption of Gotham City and the investigation on Batman's secret identity (also part of the Joker's ploy in exchange for ending his random killings) is given the kind of treatment you might expect in a Sidney Lumet picture or even "The Departed." You also get the feeling that Batman is not much use anymore, and that Bruce Wayne knows it since the public at large see him as a vigilante. Even Alfred sees that the world is changing with his prophetic words, "Some men just want to see the world burn."
My major quibble is that writer-director Christopher Nolan has given us the same conflicted Batman that we saw in "Begins" yet our batty hero is overpowered by the Joker (a similar fault lied with Tim Burton's original "Batman"). Heath Ledger gives us such a tremendously eerie and transformatively scary Joker that you can't help but feel that he has defeated Batman from the moment he first appears on screen. Batman, to an extent, is mostly on the sidelines as a crime- fighting hero who becomes more antiheroic by the end of the film. Though that is Nolan's point since the character is a noirish creation where good and evil don't quite exist, it serves as a detriment, a slight detriment but a detriment nonetheless. And the fact that Bruce Wayne's relationship to Rachel Dawes, the assistant D.A. (Maggie Gyllenhaal replacing Katie Holmes), is given such short-shrift that unless you've seen "Batman Begins," you'll have no idea why they even speak to each other.
The focus is on the righteous Harvey Dent, who becomes Two-Face, the kind of freak that Batman and the Joker have become. This shift on character is fascinating but he is eclipsed by the Joker. In fact, let me reiterate, everyone in this movie is eclipsed by the Joker. Every scene with Ledger imbues a darkness that is unmistakably noirish and heavier than perhaps the filmmakers even intended. I still wanted more scenes between Bruce Wayne and his dutiful servant, Alfred (the always magnetic Michael Caine), and the weapons and gadgets expert, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman).
Holy Criticisms, do I have anything positive to say besides Heath Ledger's performance? Of course, if you have read the opening paragraph, I clearly state that "The Dark Knight" is as good as "Batman Begins" but not superior (though this is a superior superhero movie). In terms of the scale of action and the choreography and some death-defying stunts, "The Dark Knight" is exquisitely and electrifyingly made. It is a thrill ride with a moral compass that is strikingly complex on the level of an epic tragedy. I still like the growling Batman and that awesome Batbike that travels at supersonic speeds (the Batmobile is still a marvel to watch). There are good performances and superb writing (quite a bit of a dialogue for a movie of this type) and many memorable lines of dialogue, especially by the "Why So Serious" Joker. I just miss seeing a development of Batman/ Bruce Wayne's character - he left a lasting impression at the end of the first movie and I still like to know more about the brooding Batman. In this movie, the Joker takes center stage and gives you nightmares. Essentially, this is "The Dark Joker." A great movie, just not the one I was expecting.
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