My Favorite Movies: The Dark Knight

The Batman film franchise has had an uneven but largely successful run over the past two decades, starting with Tim Burton's splashy 1989 version starring Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader and Jack Nicholson as the Joker. That Batman, successful in its own right, was the jumping-off point for the deluge of superhero movies that has come to dominate Hollywood, at least financially, ever since. A series of increasingly lame sequels kept the franchise afloat at least through 1997's poorly-received Batman and Robin, and the franchise lay dormant for some years after that.

The saga got new life in 2005, when Christopher Nolan took over for a reboot of the franchise, kicking off with Batman Begins. The film, featuring a grittier, realer Gotham City and Christian Bale in the title role, was a critical and commercial success, paving the way for 2008's brilliant sequel, The Dark Knight. This complex thriller sets the bar high for the superhero genre, not least because it features Heath Ledger in a remarkable, Oscar-winning performance as Batman's best enemy: The Joker. Much more on that later.

I won't waste too much time recapping the plot, but briefly: the nefarious Joker is wreaking havoc in Gotham by robbing mob banks, while Batman (aka Bruce Wayne), new DA Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), and police Lieutenant Gordon (Gary Oldman) join forces to take down the mob. Batman, dealing with copycats and public distrust, travels to Hong Kong to bring to justice one of the mob's accountants, putting more pressure on the mob and the Joker.

At that point the Joker puts all sorts of crazy plans in effect: murdering public servants, kidnapping Dent and lawyer Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhall), blowing up a hospital, and conducting a "social experiment" on passenger boats rigged with explosives. Obviously, Batman gets him in the end, but not before the Joker inflicts serious damage on the city's psyche, infrastructure, and leadership.

Let's be honest: this movie is all about Ledger's Joker, one of the most compelling villains in cinema. He's so clever and strange, but what drives his intrigue is how difficult it is to pin down any sort of motive. He describes himself as "an agent of chaos," which makes him virtually impossible to fight. As the butler Alfred (Michael Caine, using basically the same voice as Del the Roadie from Wayne's World) puts it, "some men just want to watch the world burn." He has absolutely no morals or apparent objectives, killing wantonly (he orchestrates the thrilling bank job that opens the film with the intention of none of his accomplices surviving), setting up impossible scenarios, burning millions of dollars, dressing hostages as killers - you name it.

At times, the Joker's impeccable planning seems a little bit impossible. Clearly he's a very clever man who always thinks several steps ahead, but come on, the timing of a lot of the stuff he pulls off is impossible. Still, it's fun to watch his plans unfold, especially his contrived plan to get caught by the police only so that he can wreak even more havoc from inside the police station and escape quickly. Any time you think you have him pinned down or figured out, he's got a twist: switching clowns and doctors in a hostage standoff, reversing the locations of the kidnapped Dent and Dawes, hiding in plain sight as a policeman or a nurse to carry out his plans. I'm looking forward to Bane in the next installment, but the Joker is a tough act to follow.

It doesn't hurt that Ledger's performance was hilarious as well - showing the mob thug his "magic trick," throwing a stack of money at Lau for no reason, dressing as a nurse, making ridiculous comments all through the movie - it's not easy to wring humor out of a character so evil and a setting so dark, but the writers and Ledger pulled it off magnificently.

Aside from Ledger, the cast is stellar here. Oldman is an excellent actor in pretty much anything he does, and this is no exception. Caine is a pro as well, but he seems like Michael Caine playing Alfred, where the original 1989 Batman guy seemed like Alfred himself. Maggie Gyllenhall and Katie Holmes' portrayals of Dawes are frankly, fairly interchangeable. Morgan Freeman takes a break from narrating various things to serve as Lucius Fox, Batman/Wayne's technology guy. Bale is solid as Batman, but there's no excuse for that ridiculous gruff voice he adopts in character. How did no one say, hey, Christian, let's ease up on the voice a bit, eh? I can't take him seriously with that ridiculous rasp.

The Dark Knight is #10 of all time in worldwide box-office gross, largely because those figures never bother to account for inflation. All of the top 36 of all time were released in 1993 or later. That having said, it's still weird to look at some of the movies that have topped The Dark Knight, like Alice in Wonderland, the horrible third and fourth Pirates of the Caribbean and third Transformers movies. James Cameron claims the top two slots, by the way, with Avatar and Titanic.

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to make of Lucius Fox's technological innovations and Bruce Wayne's upgrades. Are we supposed to regard this as advanced technology or science fiction?

The entire mobile scene where the Gotham Police transfer Dent to custody and eventually capture the Joker is a great sequence, as is his subsequent escape. I cannot believe Batman doesn't just run over the Joker when he has the chance though. Yeah, he's got his "one rule," but how about: break your ill-conceived rule and kill this man who's responsible for dozens of deaths and will undoubtedly kill more if you don't stop him here? It's a shame Batman puts his own curious ideals before pragmatism.

When the Joker is captured, Gordon remarks that the villain's "Clothing is custom, no labels." So what? Would it help matters if he bought a suit from JC Penney?

Director Christopher Nolan has crafted a very impressive filmography, with the two Batman installments, Memento, The Prestige, and Inception, among others. That's a near Hall of Fame career right there, and no, I don't know if there is a film directing Hall of Fame.

It's hard not to watch the Joker's "Social experiment" at end, where he rigs a boat filled with civilians and a boat filled with prisoners both with explosives and gives each the detonator to the other's boat, and not speculate as to what the real life outcome would be. One hopes real citizens would be so noble.

There is really only one major problem with The Dark Knight, and it bothered me even more upon my most recent viewing than it had in the past. That is, of course, the transformation of Harvey Dent into Two-Face after his disfiguration and the death of Rachel. It just doesn't work for me. You're trying to tell me that this guy, a paragon of justice, a crusader for right and wrong, is all of a sudden going to turn heel and start murdering police officers and threatening to kill innocent children for no good reason? Please. If anything, you'd think the tragedy would have steeled Dent's commitment, that he would have battled harder for fairness and justice. Nope, just flipping coins, threatening innocent people, and blaming the wrong people for Rachel's tragedy. You just want to shake him and say, dude, the Joker did it.

That aside, The Dark Knight is a dazzling film, a perfect blend of action, adventure, and mystery. See you all at The Dark Knight Rises.