Review: The Dark Knight (2008)

[Jerry Saravia]

THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
RATING: Four stars

"Batman Begins" was the best Batman film ever made, with a clear
emphasis on who Batman and was and the dual identity of its nocturnal
hero and his wealthy playboy counterpart. "The Dark Knight" has
different concerns and strengths and it is probably as good as "Batman
Begins" if it were not for a little less emphasis on Batman/Bruce
Wayne than I would have liked.

Christian Bale is once again the Batman and Bruce Wayne, this time
sensing that his days as a crime-fighting hero are possibly numbered.
In the truly effective opening sequence, we see a bank robbery with
its robbers wearing ugly clown masks and betraying each other by
killing each other (their escape, hosted by the Joker, is nifty).
Batman finds that his old foe, Scarecrow, and others are trying to do
Batman's work, to no avail. A gray-haired crime lord (Eric Roberts)
seems to have the entire city of Gotham on his payroll, but he faces a
new threat - a malevolent, ugly freak with a white plastered face and
a bloody smile, the Joker (played by the late Heath Ledger). This
Joker is not a Jack Nicholson or a Cesar Romero impersonation - he is
a tongue-flipping sociopath who thrives on chaos and destruction. He
is not really witty and he's unclean, unsafe and a sheer monster who
freely kills a gangster by impaling his head with a pencil. This man
is so freakish, so nasty, so inhuman that you'd swear it was someone
else under the makeup and not the handsome, stoic Heath Ledger. Yet
Ledger lends a shred of wit to it. I love the moment when he confronts
the city's gangsters and says, "Here is my card," as he flings a Joker
card at them.

What can Batman and ambitious D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and the
sensitive police commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) do to fight this
anarchic personality? Not much. The corruption of Gotham City and the
investigation on Batman's secret identity (also part of the Joker's
ploy in exchange for ending his random killings) is given the kind of
treatment you might expect in a Sidney Lumet picture or even "The
Departed." You also get the feeling that Batman is not much use
anymore, and that Bruce Wayne knows it since the public at large see
him as a vigilante. Even Alfred sees that the world is changing with
his prophetic words, "Some men just want to see the world burn."

My major quibble is that writer-director Christopher Nolan has given
us the same conflicted Batman that we saw in "Begins" yet our batty
hero is overpowered by the Joker (a similar fault lied with Tim
Burton's original "Batman"). Heath Ledger gives us such a tremendously
eerie and transformatively scary Joker that you can't help but feel
that he has defeated Batman from the moment he first appears on
screen. Batman, to an extent, is mostly on the sidelines as a crime-
fighting hero who becomes more antiheroic by the end of the film.
Though that is Nolan's point since the character is a noirish creation
where good and evil don't quite exist, it serves as a detriment, a
slight detriment but a detriment nonetheless. And the fact that Bruce
Wayne's relationship to Rachel Dawes, the assistant D.A. (Maggie
Gyllenhaal replacing Katie Holmes), is given such short-shrift that
unless you've seen "Batman Begins," you'll have no idea why they even
speak to each other.

The focus is on the righteous Harvey Dent, who becomes Two-Face, the
kind of freak that Batman and the Joker have become. This shift on
character is fascinating but he is eclipsed by the Joker. In fact, let
me reiterate, everyone in this movie is eclipsed by the Joker. Every
scene with Ledger imbues a darkness that is unmistakably noirish and
heavier than perhaps the filmmakers even intended. I still wanted more
scenes between Bruce Wayne and his dutiful servant, Alfred (the always
magnetic Michael Caine), and the weapons and gadgets expert, Lucius
Fox (Morgan Freeman).

Holy Criticisms, do I have anything positive to say besides Heath
Ledger's performance? Of course, if you have read the opening
paragraph, I clearly state that "The Dark Knight" is as good as
"Batman Begins" but not superior (though this is a superior superhero
movie). In terms of the scale of action and the choreography and some
death-defying stunts, "The Dark Knight" is exquisitely and
electrifyingly made. It is a thrill ride with a moral compass that is
strikingly complex on the level of an epic tragedy. I still like the
growling Batman and that awesome Batbike that travels at supersonic
speeds (the Batmobile is still a marvel to watch). There are good
performances and superb writing (quite a bit of a dialogue for a movie
of this type) and many memorable lines of dialogue, especially by the
"Why So Serious" Joker. I just miss seeing a development of Batman/
Bruce Wayne's character - he left a lasting impression at the end of
the first movie and I still like to know more about the brooding
Batman. In this movie, the Joker takes center stage and gives you
nightmares. Essentially, this is "The Dark Joker." A great movie, just
not the one I was expecting.


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