When THE DARK KNIGHT was released, for one reason or another I didn’t get out to the cinema immediately. I managed to miss the first and second weeks, and then some, probably not actually seeing it until it had already hit the billion dollar mark. Among my friends the praise was unanimous with folks returning for multiple viewings. It was safe to say that when I finally got my arse in gear and out to the cinema my expectations were sky-high. And boy did it live up to those expectations.
We begin with returning director Chris Nolan’s ode to the James Bond pre-title sequence, but with the focus squarely on the bad guy. The opening shot is of Gotham in stark daylight, and I think for the first time in a Batman movie Gotham actually looks like a city, a real world functioning city. It’s actually quite striking in its mundanity and grounds this story perfectly. The opening heist with the Joker and his cronies sticking up a mob bank, looks beautiful, and despite some of the worst ADR voices I’ve ever heard, escalates brilliantly up to The Joker’s (Heath Ledger) reveal.
Then we catch up with Batman (Christian Bale reprising the role) as the now fully established protector of Gotham. The loose string at the end of BEGINS is swiftly dealt with as Scarecrow is taken down, while we are also introduced to the copycat bat vigilantes complete with shotguns. And while Batman is pretty much a dick to the dudes trying to help him out (“I’m not wearing hockey pads”) you get the idea he’s trying to get them out of harm’s way like a dog owner trying to get his faithful old mutt to run free before some evil vet puts it to sleep.
There is still organised crime in the city but the bosses are now too frightened of Batman to meet at night and the clean-up of Gotham is also being helped along by the new sheriff in town and Rachel’s (Maggie Gyllenhaal) new boyfriend – Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).
It’s undeniable that Gyllenhaal, replacing Katie Holmes in the role of Rachel, brings a better quality of acting but I can’t help feeling that we miss something with that loss of connective tissue from the first film of the trilogy. Maggie does wonderfully, however, and displays the conflict of her concern for Bruce with the love and admiration she has for Harvey.
And Dent himself is a great addition here as juxtaposition for Batman. This is a guy who is just as moral and driven to do good as Batman, but is finding a way to do it within society’s laws. I guess he must have grown up without his parent’s murder constantly playing on his mind or something.
When Dent makes the transition to Two Face (with some excellent CG work) he sells it well and it is only the rushing of this characters development in the last act that lets it down a little.
My favourite Dent moment though, has to be where he’s in the hospital and Nurse Joker comes in, and it is only when this face-painted, awful-wig-wearing, clearly-a-man-in-a-dress removes his surgical mask that Harvey realises someone is strange and reacts. Makes me laugh out loud every time.
Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman returning as Alfred, Gordon and Fox respectively match the subtle quality of their appearances in the first instalment. The remainder of the supporting characters and even Batman and Bruce to a certain extent are so grounded this time round that it provides the perfect platform on which to set loose Heath Ledger’s Joker.
The Joker as an anarchist driven only to cause disorder, going against the police and Dent bound by laws, and against Batman bound by his own ethical code, proves to be a truly dangerous opponent. Unlike Nicholson’s rendition, this Joker is disgusting, all jittery, coughing and smacking his lips like a recovering drug addict. His makeup is smeared on haphazardly and his ear-to-ear grin is the result of a vicious Chelsea smile. The conflicting tales about the cause of which, serve to give him an air of mystery and menace. Ledger has his voice jumping all over the place from a weasley whine to a terrifying roar and he manages to pull off funny, pitiful, manic and frightening all at once. It’s been said innumerable times already but it is a fantastic performance and well deserved of Ledger’s multiple posthumous awards.
A special mention needs to go to Hans Zimmer’s score here. By literally scraping razor blades along stringed instruments he creates an ominous tone whenever the Joker is around that is just as distinctive as Darth Vader’s Imperial March and maybe even more effective at conveying the correct mood for the character.
All this great acting serves to support what is a complex and rich story. I remember feeling at the time this came out that superhero films had finally come of age. This is the superhero film that your Dad would like. In fact The Dark Knight is not really a comic book film at all. It’s An excellent crime movie, where the super-cop just happens to be Batman.
The narrative is tight and keeps the tension running high throughout, always driving forward and with spectacular, yet still relatively grounded action sequences.
In fact, The Dark Knight gained so much praise (and so much money) that there had to be a backlash, and that backlash came in the form of the phrase “Chris Nolan can’t direct action”. Man, I heard this a ton shortly after The Dark Knight came out. I watched YouTube videos that basically said “Look, in this shot the action travels from right to left instead of left to right,” “with this camera angle the audience could be confused as to which side of the room they are sitting on,” “he’s used a cut where the action doesn’t follow on precisely!” etc.
These may well be valid criticisms, but I want to call bullshit on almost everyone I heard using them. How many other summer blockbusters get subjected to shot by shot critiques of certain sections by the bog-standard general movie goer. Maybe Nolan does direct action poorly, but there’s no way most of the people who claim this could actually explain why that is the case.
I’m no cinematographer, but all can say is that I wasn’t confused and the action was fucking badass, tense, with peaks and troughs and what’s more the action develops the story both within the larger picture and within the action scenes themselves.
While I risk the “Nolan Fanboy” moniker by defending Nolan against some of the backlash, I do have to say that I don’t love this film quite as unconditionally now, as I did when I first saw it.
Particularly the final act seems to be less on par with the rest of the film. I’m not a big fan of the boats scenario. It’s a bit melodramatic, and a bit dull. Maybe if we had at least one person we cared about on those boats it might have been a bit more engaging. I’m also not a huge fan of Batman’s sonar vision and the sub plot around Fox’s moral conundrum about using it. It has really only one highlight when it malfunctions leaving Batman blind to The Joker appearing out of nowhere as he starts to beat on him like a wild chimp.
The new batsuit too. I don’t know. That cowl just kind of looks like a weird bobble head bike helmet. When Bruce asks Fox for some changes to his suit and he exclaims “you want to be able to turn your head!” well no shit, Sherlock. Of course he does, but he’s still gotta look fucking cool. The suit does fit with the film’s more grounded aesthetic though. It’s more practical and even less sculpted than the Begins suit, but I just prefer the look of the earlier model .
The Tumbler makes a return and is used to good effect to ram a garbage truck, but it’s the Bat Pod motorbike that is the new memorable vehicle. Made from the two massive front wheels of the Tumbler held together with Mecano it looks at the same time heavy-duty and worryingly fragile. But anything it lacks in sturdiness it makes up for in fire-power with a pair of huge cannons pointing out the front. But again – it is not too fantastical. They really built a working, driving, model of this thing.
In the end I think it is this grounding of Gotham and its inhabitants in a recognisable reality that really makes the film. That’s not to say this is the only way to do superhero films, and certainly not the only way to a good Batman film, but it works here. At the time it was something we hadn’t seen before and although it may have spawned a lot of the grim seriousness that seems to have pervaded much of the genre since, I think it is still done best and most effectively here. And I think this is still the best on-screen iteration of the character that we’ve seen.
Next up, we reach the final entry in this series when The Dark Knight Rises.
You can find my previous entries in this review series below.
TheGeekClassics.com 