Sensational, grandly sinister but not for the children, "The Dark Knight" elevates pulp to some very good level. Heath Ledger's Joker takes it higher still, and also the 28-year-old actor's death trapped on video tape of an accidental overdose lends the film an aura of the funeral along with a rollicking, out-of-control wake mixed together. In "The Dark Knight," Ledger makes all other comic screen villains appear to be Baby Huey. Like Shakespeare's Iago or Richard III, like Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter or Javier Bardem's implacable murderer in "No Country For Old Men," it is no Method maniac, asking or telling anyone about his character's motivation. At some point Ledger throws up his hands and says, agitatedly, that it's a complete waste of time buying rationale behind the Joker's smeary psycho-harlequin makeup.
"I'm 14 chasing cars," he says. "I wouldn't know what to do with one of them only caught it."
Director and co-writer Christopher Nolan, who fashioned the screenplay in reference to his brother, Jonathan, has created the most ambitious and sleekly beautiful of all the superhero screen outings. A few others-"Superman II" and "Spider-Man 2" go to mind-may have fewer loose ends along with a more exhilarating spirit. They're certainly shorter; this place is 152 minutes. But "The Dark Knight," which improves upon the solemn authority Nolan and Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne brought to "Batman Begins," has an atmospheric shimmer it's own. Its unsung hero is cinematographer Wally Pfister, who makes every interior and exterior anything of burnished, menacing beauty. Shot largely in Chicago during the night, greatly aided by production designer Nathan Crowley, here is the most nocturnally insinuating entertainment since Michael Mann's "Collateral."
Sampling every flat Midwestern dialect he undoubtedly heard while shooting in Chicago, Ledger increases the Joker the deceptively bland vowel sounds of heartland America. But Gotham City isn't any heartland paradise. It teeters about the verge of bloody anarchy, and it is most outr? citizen licks his chops, literally, almost like he can't get the taste of blood out of his mouth.
While billionaire playboy Wayne continues his clean-up campaign Gotham City finds a fresh symbol of righteous hope, district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). He's got all of it: a fervent want to pick up a dirty town, as well as the love and devotion of Wayne's ex, the assistant D.A. and one of an small couple of Gothamites who know Batman's true identity. She's played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, stepping in for (and improving on) Katie Holmes. Gyllenhaal's curled-at-the-corners smile matches up perfectly with Bale's.
The D.A. teams program Batman and also the weary honest cop Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman in the mustache which says "trust me") to combat organized crime, though Batman's vigilantism has inspired a lot of copycat, low-rent imitators. Then, just once the film requires a good jolt, Dent undergoes a radical real and mental transformation and becomes, literally, two-faced.
The transformation comes at a narrative cost. The film's focus is thrown slightly beyond whack, and it's too bad his coin-flipping gambit is so that way of "No Country's" Anton Chigurh. Not everything in "The Dark Knight" works: A number of the more painful flourishes-a grenade plopped inside a bank manager's mouth, the terrorization of Gordon's children-are an excessive amount of. Yet a lot of "The Dark Knight" creates different levels simultaneously. It's a brooding crime saga by incorporating spectacular action sequences. The best pits Bale's Batman with the exceptional "Bat-Pod," the world's deadliest, most awesome motorcycle, against Ledger's Joker in the 18-wheeler. The setting is Chicago's LaSalle Street canyon, and what I love regarding the scene-aside from its eerie, 3 a.m. vibe-is Nolan's attachment to good old-fashioned stunt work. "The Dark Knight" offers an abundance of digital effects, but they never control.
Nineteen in the past Jack Nicholson's Joker won a lot of the credit with the popularity of director Tim Burton's "Batman." Contrary to that stylish but uneven picture, one of many splendid aspects of "The Dark Knight" is its refusal to squander its villain. This is a true ensemble piece, so you can't say that of most $180 million franchise products. Ledger's scenes are few, carefully considered, often startlingly brutal (one scene, over in an eye-blink, involves a disappearing pencil trick and a man's skull) and freakishly effective.
Six sequences constituting about Twenty or so minutes of footage were shot using IMAX cameras, for example the opening bank heist as well as a fabulous swoop along the Hong Kong skyline. (The narrative needs a detour for any a few extraditing an Asian businessman time for Gotham and also to justice.) There's a sweep and spaciousness for the imagery here, and also a fairly easy chase sequence such as one staged along Lower Wacker Drive feels freshly considered. The violence, however rough, is essentially freed from the lingering, jokey sadism prevalent in a lot of comic-book and graphic novel-derived films. Nolan paints an inky portrait of your city failing, and in a movie rife with two-faced masquerading freaks, the Joker is only the very least conflicted of the bunch. Ledger's effort is improbably droll, impossibly creepy, meticulously detailed. Try it.
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