The Dark Knight

Duality. A dual state of quality. Think…good and evil. As Gordon told Batman at the end of “Begins”…Escalation is happening. I saw “The Dark Knight” this past Friday and just like you (yes YOU!) I was blown away. The best “comic” book story to date? Time will tell. I know this much, I felt like I was 12 years old again watching “The Empire Strikes Back”. And that is the highest compliment I can give this film and this is why even after one viewing it is possible in my three favorite movies of all time. Definitely the top five.

What was good…

The Villains.
I love it how the Joker is given NO back story or origin whatsoever. Here he is in all his anarchist brilliance. He is the devil incarnate. Dropped into the heart of Gotham and ripping it to shreds. Heath Ledger has changed the movie villain forever. All this Oscar talk is no bullshit, he was amazing. The pencil scene was a hoot. The portrait of evil has been changed forever. “Would you like to know how I got my scars”?

Gone are the neon loud suits, the cackling laugh and the way Tommy Lee Jones (who I really like as an actor) desecrated the character of Harvey Dent aka Two Face. Eckhart plays the role magnificently. Dent starts out as a crusader for justice as Gotham City's new district attorney. A series of events turn him into an advocate of injustice whose flip of a coin can mean the difference between life and death (you should know this but in case you didn‘t). Dent doesn’t overplay the character and is spot on. His face and his psyche was a nightmare.

Also, the returning cast seemed to hit their stride in this one. Bale is the best Wayne/Batman of all time. Cane IS the best Alfred. Freeman makes Fox and Oldman IS James Gordon (Nice twist in this movie, I won‘t spoil it). The characters again are brought to life.

Gyllenhaal did what she could with the “Rachel Dawes” role. No worries here…

Little touches…

-Seeing Cillian Murphy as The Scarecrow again was DOPE! Even if it was brief.
-Hearing Batman’s cape rustling as he flew around the skyscrapers in Hong Kong gave me goose bumps.
-Gotham City as a living, breathing doppelganger.

What was bad (minimal)…

The Batman voice…
It’s still growing on me but I have come to this conclusion. It's deliberate. The voice serves to hide his identity and to further create an image which is something so integral to the character. Batman's voice is a symbol of his complete transformation from Bruce Wayne into an alien ego, something completely other. Not only does it serve the practical purpose of disguising Wayne's voice, but it resonates with rage and horror...i.e. no one talks like that...and it works to terrify criminals and separate him from normal people.

The “Mapping”…
The cell phone/sonar mapping was a cool idea, but the way they expanded it later on the movie looked bad. It looked flimsy and haphazard, with no explanation for how batman developed it (to Luscious Fox's surprise) etc. It looked like some crappy XMEN 3 effects.

The movie felt like it ran a little long however it did need to resolve the story of Harvey Dent, which I dare say is the main story line here. Harvey is the bright hope of Gotham which was so completely thwarted and twisted by chaos and evil. Gotham's criminal underworld had already pushed Harvey Dent, and the Joker was the tipping point, the catalyst, that sent Harvey, and by metaphor, the entire city into a schizophrenic tailspin. The idea Batman sacrificed himself to protect Harvey Dent's memory, and in essence the last vestiges of Gotham's soul, was powerful and needed the time and space they gave the story to resolve.

A genuine masterpiece and as good as it gets…

-DAG!