Review - The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight
dir. Christoper Nolan
2008

The Dark Knight is a good movie. I like The Dark Knight. Ok? I want to get that out of the way before going further into this review as I definitely don't like (love) the movie in the same way so many do. Of course, I'm not the biggest fan of Batman Begins either so perhaps we should start there.

Batman Begins was a fine film that I felt began to fall apart once Batman was introduced. The acting was mediocre to painful (hello Mrs. Cruise) and the villains were never very interesting, frightening, or menacing. Christian Bale's raspy Batman voice was almost laugh-out-loud bad. The fight scenes were poorly staged and incomprehensible in a Jason Bourne-esque way. While these gripes were sticking points for me and Batman Begins, my largest problem with Nolan's Batman films is his insistence on hyper-realism. All these things that I disliked about Batman Begins were present in The Dark Knight, though the acting was a better with Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhardt.

The plot of The Dark Knight centers around the Joker bringing chaos to Gotham City and Batman attempting to stop him and to help district attorney Harvey Dent succeed so that Batman will no longer be needed. While those coming from a comic book background may be used to the juxtaposition of Batman and the Joker, the true pairing here is Joker and Harvey Dent/Two-Face. The Joker represents chaos and Harvey Dent represents the order that Gotham City needs. Batman is not the focus of this film.

The acting this time out has improved from the last film as Ledger and Eckhardt both give weight and bring their characters, characters who would well fall into cliche in the hands of other actors, to life. Ledger's Joker is a new take on the character, at least in film, and one which works pretty well except for the lack of laughing that the Joker should have in any incarnation. Eckhardt is quite strong as the mentally unstable Dent, but the audience will find Two-Face to not be nearly as interesting as the district attorney which is a shame. Bale is serviceable as Batman/Bruce Wayne once again although any acting he does as Batman is hardly noticeable as he rasps and bares his teeth throughout the Batman scenes. The raspy, throaty Batman voice which was rather horrible in Batman Begins returns and becomes a liability for the film when Batman has more than one or two lines in succession. As Bruce Wayne the playboy Bale is a bit better though the character remains the same as he was in Batman Begins. Katie Holmes has been replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal in the role of Rachel Dawes, but it seems that Gyllenhaal is attempting to see if she can outdo Holmes' previous low in acting with her portrayal of the character. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman return playing not only the same characters from the last film, but playing the same characters, especially in Freeman's case, that they've played in dozens of films.

Christopher Nolan once again goes the shaky-cam route for fight scenes and once again the film suffers for it. While the idea behind the shaky-cam fight scene is that it brings the viewer into the fight what it does when executed poorly is simply leave the viewer questioning that just happened. Why bother with the complex fight choreography when no one can discern what is happening on screen? The shaky-cam is slightly relaxed from the heights it reached in Batman Begins, but far too often I was once again wishing that the camera would pull back and show me what exactly was happening. In one fight I wouldn't have known Batman was fighting/wrestling with a dog except for the occasional bark and a quick edit of a some biting jaws. This isn't to say that Nolan would have excelled with a more traditional fight scene as there are some directors who simply have trouble with action, but it would have been nice for him to try.

Before diving into my largest issue with the film one more problem must be confronted. The Dark Knight is too long, too bloated, and could definitely use some editing. The film would have worked far more effectively if it were shortened by 10 or 15 minutes. A film of 152 minutes needs to have better pacing than The Dark Knight as it lurches to starts and stops and never adequately builds to the conclusion. The Lord of the Rings films, while long, were edited down from the Extended Cuts released on DVD not only for total length, but because while interesting, the long versions simply do not work as well as movies. The Dark Knight should have went in a similar direction.

Just as with Batman Begins though, for this reviewer, the crippling flaw in Nolan's The Dark Knight is the realism which he insists on. While there are some gadgets and slightly out-there set pieces most of the film functions strictly in the realm of reality and it is here where it loses me. For me, the excessive realism simply pushes me out of the film with the unreality of it all. No one in the "real world" would dress up as a giant bat and fight crime, and to push the realism of the film makes it all the more apparent that it is unrealistic at heart, as are all super heroes in comics. The hyper-realism Nolan uses pulls me out of the film in the same way as an anachronism or bad dialog will in other films. A film like Batman (1989) is obviously not meant to be realistic and because it never attempts to be I never become annoyed with the ludicrousness of a costumed hero. Even films like Spider-Man or Superman while taking place in a largely realistic New York City are styled in dialog, sets, and direction so that you are never led to believe that the creators meant for these films to be in our world and by the rules of our world in the way Nolan does. The New York Spider-Man inhabits is not our New York nor is it meant to be in the way it looks and the way it is shot. It is similar to the New York that comic-book Spider-Man lives in. Gotham City, while an imaginary city, in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight is simply Chicago. It looks and feels like our Chicago rather than Gotham City.

For me it comes down to the fact that comic book heroes are inherently unrealistic and to push for realism as much as Nolan does creates a tension in the film which becomes jarring and problematic. In the stylized worlds of other super hero films and big blockbuster action movies I can more readily accept unrealistic problems, gadgets, characters, and situations but in a film like The Dark Knight they stand out and call attention to the fact that they are unrealistic. A multi-ton Bat-tank on top of a church roof? A device which will immediately evaporate the water in pipes but not in a river? A cell phone radar technology that can see facepaint on a thug? These things and so much more stand out poorly in the realistic world Nolan wishes to construct. Nolan wants to have his cake and eat it too. Holes in logic, wholly unrealistic gadgets and vehicles, and super heroes and villains in general stand out in a way in the Dark Knight which is problematic for this reviewer. Put simply Nolan created a crime film/thriller that happens to occasionally feature the Joker, Two-Face, and Batman. Best super-hero movie? How does it even qualify as a super-hero movie?

Verdict: 3 stars out of 5.