Movie Review: The Dark Knight

    

The Dark Knight
2008, 152mins, PG-13
Director: Christopher Nolan
Writer (S): David. S. Goyer, Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan
Cast includes: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Michael Caine, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Eric Roberts
Release Date: 18th July 2008

Few films in the last few years have built up as much audience anticipation as The Dark Knight, the next step in the Batman legacy to grace screens. The pictures buzz has largely centered around the untimely death of Heath Ledger back in January but one can’t overlook the effect that Nolan’s excellent 2005 origin story Batman Begins will have had on expectations. That film was clever, exciting and dark enough to totally abolish the memory of 1997’s horrendous Batman and Robin. However The Dark Knight amps it up one step further, here Nolan has injected the caped Crusader with the most tortured, bleak and satisfying version yet. It’s far detached from most comic book fare resembling the films of Scorsese and the better works of De Palma more than any film within it’s supposed “genre”. It’s an epic and twisted crime saga before an action packed blockbuster, and indeed future generations will be baffled as to how such a superb film could have anything in common with the George Clooney atrocity.

The film picks up after Batman Begins, with just one year since Ra’s Al Ghul’s plan to have Gotham eliminated and the mysterious disappearance of Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy) AKA the Scarecrow, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) and his vigilante alter-ego the Batman, continue the seemingly-endless effort to bring order to Gotham. He still is receiving help from Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) and new crime battling district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) but even the support of these two men and their various factions can’t prepare him for the coming storm. After a year of being halted and pushed around the criminals of Gotham have turned to a new and deadly menace in the form of The Joker (Heath Ledger), a man scarred and caked in clown make-up who simply wants to see the world around him burn, with extra gasoline saved for Batman in particular. He agrees that for a large sum of the underbelly’s earnings he’ll dispose of the man and legend that is the Bat, once again plunging Gotham into a crime riddled society. Wayne has to step up and face this manic evil, who is willing to kill the innocent and corrupt the most angelic in his quest to eliminate the vigilante and provide the city with a “better class of criminal”.

At over two and a half hours The Dark Knight is one of the season’s most lengthy efforts, but by the same token it’s filled to the brim with quality and leaves the audience with plenty of meat to chew on. My main concern with blockbusters that run over the average 100 mins is that largely they haven’t the beef to deserve such a long run. In many ways you may debate that Batman Begins went on a little longer than it should and indeed that was probably one of the films few flaws, but instead of shortening his follow up Nolan corrects the problem in a different fashion as he fills all 152 minutes with gripping and relevant film. Not one member of the audience I watched the film with looked like he felt the picture was long winded and I personally could have sat and watched another half hour without complaint.
The performances are virtually all excellent; indeed the only key cast member who disappoints is foiled by the script and not acting capability. Bale once again provides a well pitched turn as Wayne tapping into his wealth of talent in a clever and engaging fashion. I always enjoyed Michael Keaton as Batman but as good as he was his skill was brooding, Bale brings far more complex and 3-D elements to the character that reward the audience for taking this journey with him. It also has to be said that in the scenes they share together Bale and Michael Caine (Playing Butler Alfred) have a terrific chemistry and wiz comic relief around like no tomorrow.
Aaron Eckhart provides possibly the best turn of his career thus far as Harvey Dent, the white angel of Gotham set purely on protecting it’s people. Eckhart exhibits the same skills as Bale in allowing the character to fully belong within a reality and offers the same engaging inner turmoil’s that affect the lead protagonist. In many ways it’s this added presence via Eckhart that elevates the film above the 2005 one, Batman finally given a fully 3-D accomplice which brings me directly to my next point. Maggie Gyllenhall takes on the role that Katie Holmes decided to leave behind her, but still the character of Rachael, Batman’s love interest remains underdeveloped and dull. It’s easy to see why Gyllenghaal a fine actress signed on as the script is terrific, but she seems to have overlooked the fact that her character is the one distracting flaw. In many ways she is more of a plot device than an actual onscreen entity.

Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman do well in the roles they take up once more, particularly Oldman who is given more to do this time around. You could debate that Freeman remains largely as a source of morals within this picture but all the same he’s always an actor worth involving.

Then finally is the film’s best performance coming via the late Heath Ledger. As the joker Ledger manages the same clownish energy that Nicholson brought to the role in 1989, but also grounds him in reality and adds extra menace and evil to this twisted and beautifully rendered character. Gone is the overzealous mugging and dancing, Leger is a villain for the ages one filled with spite and malice but with a disturbing way of making funny on them. I’m not sure if he’ll win the Oscar and personally believe talk of the sort to be premature, but there is no point in pretending he’s delivered anything else but a sensational performance.

Nolan’s Gotham is far more real than Burtons was and thus this really does give the film a more tortured and disturbed aesthetic. This feels nothing like a comic book or cartoon but rather a genuine city chucked into the belly of chaos with the most evil of men guarding the escape. This provides the film with the kick that sets it apart from other ventures, it feels like it’s happening now somewhere in the world.
The action on show is grade A stuff and expertly spliced into the picture so as to satisfy those who like their Summer films stuffed with explosions, but also not to undermine the character development and more complex themes at the films heart. One sequence in particular involving a police transport and a Bat-bike is particularly cool, but it can’t level the scene in which Batman is psychologically intimidated by the Joker and begins to beat the crap out of him. It’s this deeper and more meaningful edge that sets The Dark Knight out against its peers, the story is super and for the most part the screenwriters have channeled something more than action and heroics into the heroes head.

As for the more technical aspects, the film still comes up with smiles on this front to. The cinematography is lush and provides the same tone and gritty feel that Nolan injected into his previous visit to Gotham. The visual effects are fantastic and should contend at next year’s Oscar for that award as the CGI is mixed wonderfully well with the stunt work and acting that surrounds it. The Dark Knight also should be commended for not overusing the digitals, you get the feeling that whatever Nolan felt he could shoot right there and then was done rather than flaking off with computer graphics, and this further allows the film an added sense of realism. The musical score via James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer features several fantastic rousing numbers and creepy tunes, but in a few instances it actually drowns out the actors. Still likely by some sort of happy accident it actually increases the sense of chaos and further stamps it’s villains motifs and morals across the screen.

All in all The Dark Knight is probably the best mainstream entertainment since The Lord Of The Rings wrapped nearly five years ago, and it’s nice to see that there is still someone who can make a great Summer film and still embody it with intelligence and a sense of true and eternal quality. I can’t imagine anything will beat The Dark Knight in my books this summer season and if pattern should continue, it could be as much as five years before anything gets close. Nolan’s new film can join Jaws, Star Wars, Jurassic Park and The Lord Of The Rings as one of the greatest event movies of all time, and maybe just maybe he’ll be able to deliver a trilogy worthy of the great comic book character after all.