Posted on 06/27/2008 7:50:22 PM PDT by Vince Ferrer
Heads up: a thunderbolt is about to rip into the blanket of bland we call summer movies. The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan's absolute stunner of a follow-up to 2005's Batman Begins, is a potent provocation decked out as a comic-book movie. Feverish action? Check. Dazzling spectacle? Check. Devilish fun? Check. But Nolan is just warming up. There's something raw and elemental at work in this artfully imagined universe. Striking out from his Batman origin story, Nolan cuts through to a deeper dimension. Huh? Wha? How can a conflicted guy in a bat suit and a villain with a cracked, painted-on clown smile speak to the essentials of the human condition? Just hang on for a shock to the system. The Dark Knight creates a place where good and evil expected to do battle decide instead to get it on and dance. "I don't want to kill you," Heath Ledger's psycho Joker tells Christian Bale's stalwart Batman. "You complete me." Don't buy the tease. He means it.
The trouble is that Batman, a.k.a. playboy Bruce Wayne, has had it up to here with being the white knight. He's pissed that the public sees him as a vigilante. He'll leave the hero stuff to district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and stop the DA from moving in on Rachel Dawes (feisty Maggie Gyllenhaal, in for sweetie Katie Holmes), the lady love who is Batman's only hope for a normal life.
Everything gleams like sin in Gotham City (cinematographer Wally Pfister shot on location in Chicago, bringing a gritty reality to a cartoon fantasy). And the bad guys seem jazzed by their evildoing. Take the Joker, who treats a stunningly staged bank robbery like his private video game with accomplices in Joker masks, blood spurting and only one winner. Nolan shot this sequence, and three others, for the IMAX screen and with a finesse for choreographing action that rivals Michael Mann's Heat. But it's what's going on inside the Bathead that pulls us in. Bale is electrifying as a fallibly human crusader at war with his own conscience.
I can only speak superlatives of Ledger, who is mad-crazy-blazing brilliant as the Joker. Miles from Jack Nicholson's broadly funny take on the role in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, Ledger takes the role to the shadows, where even what's comic is hardly a relief. No plastic mask for Ledger; his face is caked with moldy makeup that highlights the red scar of a grin, the grungy hair and the yellowing teeth of a hound fresh out of hell. To the clown prince of crime, a knife is preferable to a gun, the better to "savor the moment."
The deft script, by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, taking note of Bob Kane's original Batman and Frank Miller's bleak rethink, refuses to explain the Joker with pop psychology. Forget Freudian hints about a dad who carved a smile into his son's face with a razor. As the Joker says, "What doesn't kill you makes you stranger."
The Joker represents the last completed role for Ledger, who died in January at 28 before finishing work on Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. It's typical of Ledger's total commitment to films as diverse as Brokeback Mountain and I'm Not There that he does nothing out of vanity or the need to be liked. If there's a movement to get him the first posthumous Oscar since Peter Finch won for 1976's Network, sign me up. Ledger's Joker has no gray areas he's all rampaging id. Watch him crash a party and circle Rachel, a woman torn between Bale's Bruce (she knows he's Batman) and Eckhart's DA, another lover she has to share with his civic duty. "Hello, beautiful," says the Joker, sniffing Rachel like a feral beast. He's right when he compares himself to a dog chasing a car: The chase is all. The Joker's sadism is limitless, and the masochistic delight he takes in being punched and bloodied to a pulp would shame the Marquis de Sade. "I choose chaos," says the Joker, and those words sum up what's at stake in The Dark Knight.
The Joker wants Batman to choose chaos as well. He knows humanity is what you lose while you're busy making plans to gain power. Every actor brings his A game to show the lure of the dark side. Michael Caine purrs with sarcastic wit as Bruce's butler, Alfred, who harbors a secret that could crush his boss's spirit. Morgan Freeman radiates tough wisdom as Lucius Fox, the scientist who designs those wonderful toys wait till you get a load of the Batpod but who finds his own standards being compromised. Gary Oldman is so skilled that he makes virtue exciting as Jim Gordon, the ultimate good cop and as such a prime target for the Joker. As Harvey tells the Caped Crusader, "You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain." Eckhart earns major props for scarily and movingly portraying the DA's transformation into the dreaded Harvey Two-Face, an event sparked by the brutal murder of a major character.
No fair giving away the mysteries of The Dark Knight. It's enough to marvel at the way Nolan a world-class filmmaker, be it Memento, Insomnia or The Prestige brings pop escapism whisper-close to enduring art. It's enough to watch Bale chillingly render Batman as a lost warrior, evoking Al Pacino in The Godfather II in his delusion and desolation. It's enough to see Ledger conjure up the anarchy of the Sex Pistols and A Clockwork Orange as he creates a Joker for the ages. Go ahead, bitch about the movie being too long, at two and a half hours, for short attention spans (it is), too somber for the Hulk crowd (it is), too smart for its own good (it isn't). The haunting and visionary Dark Knight soars on the wings of untamed imagination. It's full of surprises you don't see coming. And just try to get it out of your dreams.
LOL!
Consider yourself *highly* commended for you humor, sir.
Cheers!
I was telling one of my friends how it usually gets on my nerves when critics are borderline giving sexual favors in movie/music/book reviews. However, in the case of The Dark Knight it just makes me more excited to see it.
Due to circumstances beyond my control I have to wait 2 weeks to see it. All of my friends have already been warned that any spoilers sent my way will result in summary execution of our friendship.
BTW, here's a few more reviews. The first is Variety's (again rave) review:
Kirk Honeycutt of the Hollywood Reporter says:
As to save us any further complications, the reviews are beginning to pour into Rottentomatoes.com...right now, they have 8 total, which I suspect will grow with time. All of them are rave:
The first American film made in the PROC.
Wow, I had no idea, thanks for the info!
The next one with the two black cops is a reverse on the last animated series (on Sat mornings still around here but mostly the same one season) with the “Batwave” Batman.
The woman cop trust Batman and the dude doesn't which is backwards from that series. The hispanic girl in the cartoon didn't like Batman and the black guy turned into Clayface.
Yeah, I got to see it a week early because of my job. I liked it enough to buy it at Wal-Mart today.
I give it a solid B. It had lots of lame parts, and lots of really good ones. I think the last one, “Deadshot,” is my favorite, although the one you were referring to (”Crossfire”) was very well-written. I had to think about the flashback-training one for a minute, and thought the Scarecrow-kidnaps-the-cardinal episode was good, if a bit...weird.
The kid one was atrocious. The animation was incomprehensible and static, the characters were poorly drawn, and the voice acting was embarrassing. The fake street-thug accents were painful to listen to. And for the record, I do love that particular episode of B:TAS it seemed taken from...but the execution was a LOT better in that one (and the references/tributes to Batfan-culture were hilarious).
If you recall there were quite a few scenes of Japanese brutalizing various people. One gathers this was played up to please the host country. The Japanese atrocities in China were considerable were considerable. It’s a good film that was not a popular success. I think people mixed it up with The Last Emperor.
So far the only complaints I have seen is that it is a little too intense for the duration. That by the end you are worn out.
I have seen that movie theaters are rapidly adding 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. shows to meet demand. And The Joker gave away free tickets to several IMAX showings the other day. He is a sneaky devil, subverting capitalism now.
Richard Roeper and Michael Philips on “Ebert and Roeper.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UELDTKPC-lo
I read today on Drudge that the movie is already 90% pre-sold for Friday.
Warner Bros. is playing down expectations but it could go over $150 million (a record) this weekend.
Glad I bought mine over a week ago. Our local IMAX isn’t showing it though. I doubt the limited IMAX availabe leaves Nashville out of the loop. Maybe it will come eventually.
Mr. Blonde; we have two reviews from Roger Ebert and James Berardinelli, my two all-time favorite movie critics. Both gave it 4 stars...and coming from Berardinelli, that's something. The last time he gave a movie 4 stars was 2006's "The Departed." I would warn that the Ebert one is very spoilerish.
Equilibrium and American Psycho. Bale’s pretty good in both. Further, he’s playing John Connor in the next Terminator movie coming out later this year.
That poster reminded me of the same thing. Gyllenhaal was enough to turn me off, so I wasn't going to see the movie anyway. But that poster was in poor taste, even for Hollyweird.
I had not heard about his playing John Connor, very cool!
Terminator movies are another of my guilty pleasures, especially the first which I often quote here on FR:
Listen Republicans, and understand.
The UnAmerican Democrat Party are out there. They can’t be bargained with. They can’t be reasoned with. They don’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until we are dead.
Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal Makes Controversial Remarks About 9/11
His character in 3:10 to Yuma was great. Liked that movie all around.
If you suspend dis-belief, "Wanted" is a fun action flick. Pure entertainment, decent plot. Jolie is looking thin, though. Wife and I enjoyed it. No preachy message to have to sit through.
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