Movie Review: The Dark Knight

In 1986, Frank Miller helped to redefine the comic book world with his opus, The Dark Knight Returns. It took the Batman character that we'd all grown up with and, well...evolved him. Or perhaps, devolved him into the true essence of what he was intended to be - a dark, brooding, avenger who walks in the shadows and strikes terror in the hearts of criminals. He took away the bright colors, the upstanding morality, and enhanced his core personality of a man whose goal is absolute justice, and the eradication of criminality. It was dark, twisted, brutal...and we loved it.

So, too, goes this second installment in the reimagined film adaptation of the Batman.

The Dark Knight lives up to it's title in every way imaginable. All vestiges of the Tim Burton version have been eradicated, leaving us with a Batman who lives in our world. Gone are the comic book images, the campy villains; whereas Batman Begins was a reintroduction to the character and explored the psychological mind of a man who is driven to avenge the streets, the Dark Knight gives us his mirror twin - his opposite, and yet in many ways his doppleganger. The Joker.

No one can deny that Jack Nicholson's Joker was a wild, uncontrollable nutjob that evoked a sense of giggling, manaical madman from the old television show - but with a certain ruthlessness that brought us more to the psychopath from the comic books. It was a great performance by Jack.

Heath Ledger absolutely blew him out of the water. This Joker will haunt your nightmares, his laugh will make you flinch in the dark. This is the Joker from the comic novel, the Killing Joke; the one who crippled and debased the crimefighting daughter of Commissioner Gordon, and who used the images of that debasement (and possible defilement) in an attempt to drive Gordon mad - simply for the sake of proving that good men CAN in fact, go bad. This is the Joker who, for no reason other than the twisted joy of the moment, beat a helpless teenaged Robin to a pulp with a crowbar, then proceeded to blow him up. Not out of a sense of revenge, or anger...but for the excitement of it.

Ledger has managed to capture the dangerous insanity of the character and transform himself, almost unrecognizably so, into the perfect foil for Christian Bale's dark knight. They have become the classic anti-hero and psychopath villain, the latter driven to his evil schemes for no other reason than to frustrate the former, the former driven to the brink of madness in an attempt to understand and defeat the mind of the latter. They are yin and yang, opposite and yet intertwined - just as they should be.

Cillian Murphy makes a surprise appearance here, reprising his role - however briefly - as the Scarecrow. Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman Gary Oldham return in their roles as Alfred, Lucius Fox and Gordon respectively, and Maggie Gyllenhall turns in a nice performace in replacing the elfish Katie Holmes (although her interrogation as ADA of a suspect bordered more on seductive than tough).

Aaron Eckhart, by contrast, turns in a powerful performace himself as District Attorney Harvey Dent. Throuout the movie, Dent is Elliot Ness - he's unfraid, determined, as obsessed with cleaning up Gotham City as Batman. He's the Daywalker to Batman's Nightmare, doing in front of the cameras and the people what Batman does from the shadows.

The following is a spoiler alert, so if you're completely unfamiliar with the Batman mythos and stable of villains, you should stop reading here.

When Dent is scarred, when he is betrayed (or believes so) by the very system of Justice he'd spent so much time upholding...his fall is hard, and absolute. His metamorphasis into the aptly named Two-Face...you cannot imagine the sheer terror he evokes, simply by the scarring of his face. He is on the outside just as he is inside - a man divided, of two minds and two souls; he embraces the anthesis of everything he'd believed in, and becomes that which he'd fought against - a monster, bent on the destruction of everything moral and just.

They become an interesting combination - the Joker, a creature of whim and lacking any sense of morality or ethics, and Two-Face - a monster who bases each action on chance, no longer believing that humanity is capable of following a true and just path and using the flip of a coin to decide his next action, whether good or evil.

If there is a critcism to make, it is that Bale's voicing while in the costume comes dangerously close to annoying. His overly done rasping and growling works in short does, but when trying to speak more than a paragraph of words you realize how much of a strain it is for him to maintain it, and maintain it trying to keep in character. I would prefer they use, within the storyline, electronics to mask his voice rather than asking Bale to emote while trying not to cough.

Overall: this is not a movie for children, and I would highly recommend leaving any child under 10 at home. This is not a comic book, this is a graphic novel in movie form. You will sit capitvated, on the edge of your seat; you will jump at places as if you're watching a horror movie, you will laugh at the Joker's antics even as you're simultaneously horrified by them. Your heart will race at the fights, at the decisions our heroes are forced to make - or not make.

And at the end of the two and a half hours, you will lean back - exhale deeply - and smile, having seen what is quite possibly the best comic book movie to date.