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Review: “The Dark Knight”
By Kyle | July 15, 2008
GRINNER TAKES ALL
153 minutes/Rated PG-13
Kyle Smith review of “The Dark Knight”
“To them, you’re just a freak — like me,” the Joker tells Batman in “The Dark Knight.” The alienated Batman finds it difficult to disagree. He takes a fierce stance in favor of untruth, surveillance and (but?) the American way. “Batman has no limits,” is how Bruce Wayne puts it, and there are two sides to that coin.
The highest praise I can give a superhero movie is that it makes me forget about its ten-cent-comic-book soul. “The Dark Knight,” unlike its superior predecessor, has some absurdly improbable scheming and sputtering one-liners. It also lacks the chord of ancient evil struck in “Batman Begins.”
But summer blockbusters don’t get much better than Batman on his new mega-cycle barreling down a Gotham highway straight at the Joker and his 18-wheeler, or the caped one hurling himself out of the window of a skyscraper to first catch a falling body, then worry about landing. When Batman needs to turn his bike around, he runs it up the side of a building.
Not least among the welcome features of the new edition, which ventures into shadowlands unknown to “Spider-Man” and the rest, is its references to “the bat man,” a distancing touch. He’s not one of us, someone you’re on a first-name basis with. He is a weird loner who doesn’t care what you think of him. Batman is obsessed, unrepentant and excessive. Batman is cool.
The hard-charging set pieces, photographed in extravagantly moody splendor, come with implicit commentary on Guantanamo, wiretapping, the indispensability of propaganda, the age of terrorism and faith. There’s even a mention of the corrupting possibilities of healthcare costs. “The Dark Knight” benches a lot of weight for an action flick. It creates an experience either less fun or less silly, depending on your taste, than, say, “Iron Man.”
Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne has lost his girl Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal, replacing Katie Holmes) to the arms of the ambitious new D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). Dent has the grin of an infomerical pitchman but an impressive record of rounding up criminals, and Batman considers handing over to him the leadership of the Gotham crime-fighting business. That could carry the added benefit of winning back his girl, who insists she can’t be with Bruce until it’s no longer necessary for him to be Batman.
Enter a wild card.
Bale is nobody’s patsy. When Dent talks about attending a dance performance with Rachel, Bale’s dry delivery neatly cuts him down with the line, “So, you’re into ballet?”
Yet the picture is wholly owned by a cold-blooded Heath Ledger as the asparagus-haired mountebank who stages heists, makes mobsters tremble and seems to have seeded the entire city (an almost undisguised Chicago) with explosives and double agents. (Why would anyone work for him? The opening scene establishes that his confederates have the life expectancy of Sea Monkeys.)
Instead of cackling his lines a la Nicholson, Ledger mumbles them like a naughty third grader, his weirdness accentuated by a fantastically unnerving score built on terror tones, like air-raid alarms or life-support equipment. Occasionally he shakes his jowls, drunk on his own crazy sauce. You know you’ve got skills when you can get a laugh out of saying, “Hi!” Of one kidnappee, he says, “He may be in one spot or several.” To the Dark Knight himself, he declares, “You complete me.” Brokeback Batman.
At first, the Joker is tied in with a mob money-laundering plot that seems far too small and bland for a hero of Batman’s proportions. What next? Batman vs. high gasoline prices?
There is also some dim dialogue (“Let’s not do that again,” “The night is darkest just before the dawn,” “I didn’t sign up for this”), and Gyllenhaal is jarring, making little effort to match Holmes’ earnestness. It’s starting to look like Gyllenhaal can do only one thing — saucy, smart-mouthed alterna-vixen. That might have been fine if she had created the role.
In the second half, as the mobsters (headed by a blow-dried Eric Roberts, overdoing it) fade from view, writer-director Christopher Nolan has as much fun as the Joker, stringing his main characters together with a series of tripwires. Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is much more of a player this time, and there’s a major disagreement between Batman and his tech expert (Morgan Freeman), though Alfred (Michael Caine) doesn’t get enough to do.
As was true of the blundering Hancock in the comedy of the same name, Batman can’t claim public love. His approval ratings are in the tank. Maybe he should stop inviting terrorist attacks by being such an inflexible anti-terrorist. Maybe he should be locked up while people learn to live with the Joker. Isn’t it Batman’s fault that cops have been killed in action?
“I’m a guy with simple tastes. I enjoy dynamite and gunpowder and gasoline,” says the Joker. Okay, and as for the turn-ons of Bachelor No. 2, the Dark Knight has equally explosive interests. He sets up a system for monitoring pretty much everyone, everywhere. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he says. That shuddery feeling going through the audience doesn’t arise solely from Ledger’s death. Batman lives in a messy world. If no one else is willing to make hard choices, he will.
Topics: Movies |
July 15th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
As the first person to be able to slap a review onto this review. I give Mr. Kyle Smiths unstuttering commentary on the “Dark Knight” a giant Maybe. I mean I havn’t seen it yet so how the heck can i comment on this.
Though a comment on reviews in general (and this endless piece of digital paper seems like just as good a place as any to comment on these things).
Based on box office receipts some absolutely horrid movies can still score a huge opening weekends and overall cash withdrawals at our local moving picture stadiums despite critics verbally miturating upon them.
So the question: What percent of reviews do people care about and what percentage is pure entertainment?
July 15th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
i have yet to see the film, so I cannot critique your review. However, I can fully say that your “Brokeback Batman” comment is ENTIRELY out of line and unwarranted. I am not a homosexual, nor am I am activist, but from what I have read, and from the clips that I have seen, this film deserves better than some juvenile attempt at humor.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Jason, Kyle seems to be saying that a joke about *Brokeback Mountain* was in the movie.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:17 am
Yeah no, Brokeback batman is NOT in the movie. and it was a really lame, tasteless cheap joke
July 16th, 2008 at 12:20 am
There is no joke about “Brokeback Mountain” in the movie, but Ledger’s Joker is a bit fey and mincing.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:21 am
By the way, Jic, any ideas on how I can get people who lack a basic sense of humor to stay away from my writing? Really, fanboys, you disappoint me.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:29 am
Decent review, but yeah the Brokeback Batman joke was tasteless.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:48 am
You guys have had too much sensitivity training.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:49 am
I’ve seriously read a lot better from you.
I’m not going to blindly comment on a movie I haven’t even seen yet, but I will say your review was quite disappointing. Reading the last line of your second paragraph was similar to grinding the wheels of my brain over a mental speed bump. I can appreciate literary playfulness, but there’s a difference between being clever with words and tacking puns onto the end of your thoughts. The “Brokeback Batman” joke wasn’t tasteless, it was just about as contrived as an aspiring comedian who awkwardly sets up his whole routine around one mediocre punchline. You also spend more time finding ways to sneak your political interpretations of the film into context than truly expanding on its plot.
If you really wrote this in less than two hours, I guess some of it is forgivable. I really wanted to like this review.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:18 am
Good review. Looks like some people are looking too deep into that one comment. I don’t see why it’s offensive unless your a homophobe or you are some zealous gay activist. Heath Ledger was proud of his work on both of these movies, and as far as I can tell doesn’t dislike gays or dress up in assless chaps and prance down the street. So maybe you should take the whining down a notch. Frankly “you complete me” while a powerful comment within the context of the movie, is ripe for little jokes out of context. Pretty tame stuff, all you guys should call the EEOC, because your so damn sensitive it’s funny.
July 16th, 2008 at 2:39 am
I have seen the film. I quite liked the review, for I do enjoy Kyle’s sense of humour, which is sort of P.G. Wodehouse by way of P.J. O’Rourke, but I have to say that, ultimately, I found it rather glib. I cannot imagine anyone in possession of brains, wit or wonder, not having a grand old time watching the film. I myself shall see it at least rwice.
July 16th, 2008 at 3:08 am
“that brokeback batman joke was cheap and tasteless!” please, give me a break. While this wasn’t my favorite review of yours, it was still good. You probably have the best sense of humor of any reviewer around right now. But please, what was tasteless about that brokeback batman joke? Heath ledgers joker says to batman, another guy, “you complete me,” which sounds like a line that couldve come from brokeback mountain, and heath was in brokeback. So how’s it tasteless? Its not like kyle’s making fun of gays or anything, he’s merely making a harmless, comical observation. People need to stop being overly sensitive. Can’t wait until the next movie from the “date movie” creators comes out so I can read another one of your brilliant zero to one star reviews!
July 16th, 2008 at 4:30 am
BEST MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN! Loved Batman Begins, but this topped it for me.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/05/28/101-being-offended/
July 16th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
I read this on the way to work in the Post. It got pretty mangled at the typesetters, at least in my edition. Maybe the Post makes a special sloppy edition for distribution on New Jersey.
July 16th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Kyle, you should be proud when you annoy people, after all that’s the quote you have on top of your blog. No matter what you write someone’s going to have a problem with it, but I guess that’s the crazy PC world we live in.
July 17th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
“The opening scene establishes that his confederates have the life expectancy of Sea Monkeys.”
This comment is ENTIRELY out of line and unwarranted. I am not a confederate, nor am I a Sea Monkey, but from what I have read, people leaving comments here are morons.
Besides, wasn’t “you complete me” coined in Jerry Maguire? It’s not like the Joker said, “I just can’t quit you, Batman!”