|
|
- The Advocate eEdition
- |
- Wedding Forms
- |
- Newsletters
- |
- Text Alerts
- |
- Mobile
- |
- RSS
- |
'Dark Knight' transcends superhero movies
Movie Review: The Dark Knight
By John Wirt
jwirt@theadvocate.com
Advocate movie critic
|
PLAY OFFICIAL TRAILER
out of 4 stars.
If the much-anticipated The Dark Knight doesn’t knock the socks off audiences, it won’t be because the film’s director, cast, cinematographer, costume and set designers, its two Oscar-winning composers, etc., didn’t produce a cinematic feast.
During the summer of 2008, at least, the price of a single movie ticket isn’t likely to buy more on-screen entertainment value than this unusually ambitious superhero epic.
The Dark Knight, the follow-up to 2005’s Batman Begins, more than makes good on the earlier film’s Batman series resurrection. Elaborately choreographed, maximum-impact action scenes and stunts; a tightly wound plot filled with tension and twists; and a superior cast make The Dark Knight soar, not to mention swoop down upon bad guys. Beyond entertainment, though, this dark, event-laden tale continuously challenges audiences by not taking an easy or obvious path. While there’s a sprinkling of comedy, this is really serious stuff.
Early in The Dark Knight, things are looking up in Gotham. A crusading district attorney is waging a courageous war against organized crime. Harvey Dent is a brave, smart guy who’s taking previously comfortable career criminals off the city’s streets, wholesale style.
The smartly cast Aaron Eckhart (Thank You For Smoking) plays Dent, the DA, who happens to be dating Bruce Wayne’s ex-girlfriend, Rachel Dawes. Playing Rachel, Maggie Gyllenhaal (replacing the first film’s Katie Holmes), joins a heavyweight acting ensemble carried over from Batman Begins. Gary Oldman returns as the ever dependable Lt. James Gordon of the Gotham City police department; Michael Caine is Bruce Wayne’s wise and faithful butler, Alfred; Morgan Freeman is Lucius Fox, CEO of Wayne Enterprises; and, of course, Christian Bale again dons Wayne’s fine suits and Batman’s cape.
The Dark Knight contains so many virtuoso stunts and action sequences — albeit stunts and action in the service of a deep storyline — that Bale needn’t do a great deal of acting. The strained tone of voice he affects when he’s wearing the cape, too, sounds a bit affected.
Frankly, The Dark Knight performance that rises above the rest, even though the other performances are definitely worthy of this daring enterprise, belongs to the late Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain, I’m Not There, Monster’s Ball). Ledger becomes The Joker, the brilliant, demented villain who renders all of the film’s other villains amateurs.
Even beneath his hideous Joker makeup, the Australian actor rules the screen in a performance that’s part comedy, part psychological horror show. The Joker’s motivation is gradually revealed, made known as much through Ledger’s sly, disturbing performance as through the spiraling chaos he lets loose upon Gotham.
Filmgoers who enjoy such familiar summer movie sights as massive, fiery explosions, high-speed chases, shattering glass, gun battles and old-fashioned fights, will find plenty of them in The Dark Knight. But the film, written by director Nolan with his brother, Jonathan, and David S. Goyer (another returning talent from Batman Begins), subversively applies customary movie ingredients to its higher purpose. The Dark Knight cracks open a Pandora’s box of choices and consequences. It contains the inevitable complexity and injustice of real life, vexing troubles from which not even a superhero is immune.
