I Feel Evil Creeping In

I saw The Dark Knight opening night in a vain attempt to view the film with some degree of objectivity. I avoided movie reviews, but it's hard to enter a film like this without preconceived notions. The hype's been swirling for months now, and going in, I have to admit feeling a certain degree of reluctance - I was sure it was going to be a great fucking ride, but I wasn't going to make it easy to win me over. I felt similarly seeing Batman Begins, which completely surpassed expectations, so I say the following without guilt.

If you liked the tack taken with Batman Begins, you'll be satisfied with the darkness Nolan steeps Gotham in here. This is still a city run by the bad guys, where the good guys fight half-heartedly, knowing that even their best bet is operating in a system that routinely gives them the short shrift. This is still the Gotham on the brink of descending into chaos, but not quite there yet - with the mob still controlling things, the city is run by a law that chokes the actual law at every turn, but has its own order. This is the Gotham that needs Batman, if only to give the good guys a fighting chance, but he certainly isn't one of them. Batman has a gray niche all carved out for himself, keeping himself at arms length from Gordon and the new DA, Harvey Dent, and fighting crime by subverting the stealth the mobsters usually reserve for their interactions. It's a tenuous situation, but at film's open, Right is gaining ground over Wrong, inch by inch.

Into the fray, enter anarchy.

This Joker is exactly what the Joker should always have been depicted as - delighting in debasing people, sadistically twisting the knife wherever possible, overturning the status quo. He is given more lingering screen time as the film progresses, in a fantastic move on Nolan's part; the beginning, where he's just a lunatic but the mob's best shot at getting the Bat, gradually gives way to lengthier interactions with central characters. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this is how it exposes how unbelievably sane he is. He shows perfect clarity in understanding his place in that system, as an agent of change, and as Batman's foil. I particularly liked how the story of his scars changed every time he told it - he is a man without history, and he's emerged because he's had to. The theatre laughed when the Joker mockingly says that Batman "completes him", but this is the Joker at his most plainly spoken. Batman emerged as a scourge of the underworld, taking two steps ahead of the status quo in order to give good a fighting chance. In doing so, however, in donning a costume and a moniker, in becoming a symbol, there can only have been an equal and opposite reaction. In opening the door to masked crusaders, he only opened it wider for masked villains, also stepping up their game. By refusing to play by the rules, Batman has created a villain willing to throw all of the rules in the pile and burn them with the rest of the world. And he knows that in order for the Joker to be truly, finally stopped, Batman will have to break his only rule - to not kill - but in that, would be giving the final point to the Joker, who will have debased the only order left in the name of good.

That praise being said, this is not a flawless film. This is not the film the hype made it out to be.

This is a long film. I understand there's a tendency in Hollywood not to cut all of those lovely, expensive scenes that were filmed, but ultimately, we are left with films bogged down by their own weight - an action movie should not forget what its ultimate goal should be. I laud the filmmakers for making a film that gazes at its navel from time to time, because that is certainly a step above even the best of purely action films (such as Ironman), but superfluous storylines do not a stronger movie make. I can easily think of a storyline that should have been cut (involving Hong Kong, for those who have seen it), and would have resulted in a much tighter film overall. In addition to that, Maggie Gyllenhaal was just as fucking wooden as Katie Holmes, which so frustrating as I'm a big fan of hers. And, perhaps the most worrisome, was how little I cared for the characters. There were some exceptions; Aaron Eckhart did a fantastic job (and I was pleasantly surprised to see much of Harvey Dent pre-Two-Face), and Ledger was unbelievably fun to watch onscreen. I agree that it was truly a shame he died so young, and it's pretty clear here how talented he was, but this talk of an Oscar for this role would be a joke - the Academy missed their chance with his breathtaking performance in Brokeback Mountain.

But back to my original point, I cared more about the supporting characters than I did our leading man. Christian Bale carried the mantle of Batman well enough, but he wasn't given the opportunity to make the audience truly care about how the trials were affecting him. The only time we're let in enough to see something genuine is in the interrogation scene with the Joker, and even then, he's playing second-fiddle to Ledger's utter domination in every scene he was in. Perhaps the next film will allow for Bale to flex his own formidable acting chops.

So, overall, this is definitely worth your 12$. While it may be a longer than it should be and lacks the emotional depth I'd have preferred, the questions it forces you to examine about what Batman is for the people he protects are far above and beyond what any comic-book adaptation has been able to bring to its audience. Nolan has created, in his Batman franchise, movies that take its audience seriously enough to present them with the complexities inherent in every battle between good and evil, especially when Batman is the straddler in question.

3.9 out of 5 (edited to bump it up from 3.5)