Presents

The Dark Knight

I know that most people come here to find out about movies that they might not have heard about, or would ordinarily never watch, but every once in a while, I just have to talk about a movie that everyone else is talking about, and this time, it's The Dark Knight!

  Let's start with the basic story (THERE MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD....SO BEWARE!!), we pick up where Batman Begins left off more or less, Batman is still keeping Gotham clean and the police are torn whether or not to embrace him, even though to the general public Batman is a hero.  When a new DA comes to town, a young idealist, Harvey Dent, Batman sees that, if Dent's not too good to be true, it may be time for him to step aside as Gotham's hero.  As Batman begins to dismantle the mafia in Gotham, there's a daring bank robbery by the Joker...of a bank that launders Mafia money!  Well, this is merely a way for the Joker to get the attention of the mob, what's he's really after is to kill the Batman, and since the mob is on board with the plan, they make a deal.  Now, the Joker is on the loose, killing innocent people (or anyone really) in order to get Batman to unmask.  Now, Batman must decide, does he turn himself in to keep innocent people from being hurt, or keep doing what he's doing in order to stop the Joker and clean up Gotham no matter the cost.

Here's the deal, I'm a huge Batman geek...always have been, probably always will be...but there are some things that I like and some that I dislike about this movie.  This is a dark movie, which I feel is totally in the spirit of Batman, a dark silent figure who terrifies the criminal element.  I think Christian Bale is okay as Bruce Wayne, but that voice he does when he's Batman just grates me...it's like he's trying too hard!  The idea of the Joker as a violent psychopath is right in line with the original stories, so I thought that was great, but Heath Ledger didn't do much for me.  I know that the popular view is that he's brilliant and he'll get an Oscar nomination, but let's be honest, if Heath was still alive, this wouldn't be happening.  This version of the Joker is a strange combination of the original Joker and what the Joker might be like in reality.  I understand that Christopher Nolan wants to base this all in reality, but since we're suspending our disbelief when a guy puts a Batman mask on and leaps from a roof-top, we can keep going and make the Joker what he always was...the Clown Prince Of Crime!  The green hair here is only highlights, the white face is makeup and the leering smile is scars that are explained multiple ways in order to show us that this Joker is unbalanced in the extreme.  I'm pretty sure that if we're all on board with a rich guy in the bat suit, why not the guy dipped in chemicals and turned into a white faced leering maniac?

Overall, I think The Dark Knight was about 45 minutes too long, there's really no reason for sending Batman to Hong Kong, other than to do a cool stunt, and the overall Mafia angle could have been shortened considerably!  And while Heath Ledger's Joker is good.  Oscar worthy?  I don't think so.  Yes, it's a tragedy he died, but that doesn't make this the greatest performance of all time, it just makes it his last performance.  The unsung hero of the movie is really Harvey Dent, who goes from the White Knight Of Gotham, and the man who Batman wants to step aside for, to becoming Two Face, a mentally unstable burn victim who wants the world punished for the loss of his girlfriend.  Aaron Eckhart plays both the goody two shoes and the homicidal killer wonderfully, and (SPOILER HERE) I was pretty upset that Nolan and company decided to kill of this potentially great Batman villain barely half an hour after he's created!!  Bad move!

I'm giving The Dark Knight three out of four cigars, it's not perfect, it's a little too long and don't believe the hype.  But, if you're a Batman fan, then you're going to see it anyway, and if you've been in front of a TV at all in the past six months, then you'll probably want to see what all the hype is about.  But, if you're looking for the 'best comic book movie ever' then you might want to check out Iron Man!  So, until next time, when I'll be taking hate mail from the Heath Ledger apologists out there , remember that the best movies are bad movies.