Rating in Stars: **** (out of ****)
Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Director: Christopher Nolan
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and some menace)
Running Time: 2:32
Release Date: 07/18/08
Upon donning the cape, cowl, and alter ego of the Batman, it’s very likely that Bruce Wayne never envisioned that his plan to return fear upon those who prey upon the fearful would be this much trouble. That becomes clear very soon into The Dark Knight, a thunderous sequel to 2005’s Batman Begins, which captures quite forcefully the old adage about good deeds. The symbol for the city of Gotham that the Batman was meant to be has now inspired copycats who resort to the use of shotguns while wondering how their method is any different from the real hero’s and chaos (of the systematic sort) in a city already long prone to it. Here is a symbol meant to inspire good; over there are the forces that would slowly chip away at the influence.
Bruce (Christian Bale) as the Batman has been keeping busy. The mob has been getting hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time from banks that have been infiltrated by their ranks (The opening sequence depicts a meticulous heist of one of these banks, and William Fichtner appears in a cameo as its manager, who is as unabashed to pull out a shotgun as the robbers). Different sects of the city’s mob (whose leaders are played by the likes of Eric Roberts, Michael Jai White, and Ritchie Coster) make deals behind closed doors–and even some of Gotham’s finest are among those on the mob’s payroll, although Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and the mayor of Gotham (Nestor Carbonell) represent the ones who haven’t been swayed by criminal influence.
Bruce as a public figure is enjoying the nightlife spoils of his wealth, inherited from the parents for whose deaths he still feels guilty, although the fact that popular new district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) can be seen on the street and in the news with Bruce’s former flame, assistant district attorney Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, filling in for a missing-in-action Katie Holmes), hanging off his arm forces Bruce’s faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine) to remind him of the costs of becoming a masked vigilante who spends his nights beating the bad guys senseless. “Know your limits,” Alfred advises; “I can’t afford to know them,” is Bruce’s foreboding reply.
The plot within the screenplay, written by director Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan, is remarkably streamlined. We have the conflict raising its head almost immediately upon reintroduction to the central characters, we have the conflict being complicated by twists in the development of the series of events, we have the introduction to a new villain (Again, I will get to him in a minute) who introduces a new dynamic within the balance, and we have those dynamic action sequences (shot with stunning mise en scene by Nolan and cinematographer Wally Pfister, whose compositions are particularly striking here).
And now we get to that villain (who, by the end, is one of a pair, though clearly and distinctly the more dangerous one). He is known only as the Joker. He comes with custom clothing, primitive weaponry such as knives (which, he explains to one character, he prefers to guns because of the methodical way in which he can use them), and a simple request: The Batman must reveal his identity. Oh, and he’ll kill people if this doesn’t happen within his arbitrary time frames. Heath Ledger, who is terrifying here, plays the Joker as a man with both a lack of conscience and a pitch-black sense of humor (a “magic trick” involving a pencil, his reaction to a faulty detonator or to a mob boss suggesting that he thinks he can succeed without bodily injury to himself, his follow-through of the Batman’s plea to “let go” of a hostage).
He’s a villain for the ages because of how merciless he is without even feeling the need to be menacing, and the performance at the center of it is unnerving enough that one doesn’t remotely need to wonder why the Joker character is the Batman’s long-gestating nemesis. The climax, which has two layers to peel back (two boats full of hostages followed by a crisis on a more intimate level), also revolves around the other villain who crops up as a result of the Joker’s influence on the events. They’re far from predictable and manage to reflect the relentless forward motion of The Dark Knight into the territory of not merely a superhero blockbuster but a grand and thrilling crime drama.
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