Movie review: The Dark Knight

by John P. Meyer

Much - I was beginning to think perhaps too much - has been made of Heath Ledger's swan song performance as The Joker in Chris Nolan's sophomore Batman outing, The Dark Knight. Ever since his death, there has been buzz going around about how fantastic his portrayal of the clown-faced, dark-hearted DC villain turned out to be.

Well, it's true.

The Dark Knight makes all previous Batman movies seem maudlin by comparison, and I include (to a lesser extent) even Nolan's excellent Batman Begins in this assessment. That film - which succeeded in upping the Caped Crusader's cinematic gravitas a notch - itself was hobbled a bit by its character-establishing backstory and ninja sensei subplot underpinnings. Dark Knight needs none of this, focusing for a relentless (and nail-biting) 2 1/2 hours on nothing but the basics: vigilante crime-fighter vs. Gotham's self-appointed King of Disorganized Crime. It's the elemental story of an irresistible force meeting the immovable object to which it is irrevocably - and cataclysmically - drawn.

Bale and Ledger's characters are equivalent to one of those two-component compounds that, when combined, become highly explosive. Nolan (who also wrote the story treatment, along with brother Jonathan and David Goyer) succeeds in spinning up these iconic representatives of good and evil (or, more properly, right and wrong) into frenzied motion on their separate spindles, and then veering them into each other like highly-energetic sub-particles of opposite charge. KABOOM!

Oh - and it doesn't hurt to have such powerhouses of dramatic cinema as Caine, Freeman and Oldman backing the play in solid supporting roles.

The action begins at the scene of a bank robbery in which all the robbers wear clown masks. These chumps talk a pretty good game until they meet up with the bank manager (William Fichtner, operating a pump shotgun like it was an arm extension). This no-nonsense fellow assists The Joker by winnowing the field of those who will be receiving cuts of the take, before himself catching a bullet. Or two.

Cut to another crime scene, this one involving last episode's arch-villain, Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy, seen only in his ragged hood). He's meeting with some unsavory mob-connected characters who are interested in his mind-altering chemistry experiments, when who should appear in the parking garage but a collection of Batmen - wielding semi-automatic weapons. (Posers!) So, what does one get in Gotham for impersonating a bat? Lots of unexpected trouble when their little vigilante act goes awry, it turns out. Fortunately, the real Batman arrives to instruct them in the error of their ways. And save their asses.

Meanwhile - in broad daylight, thanks to Batman's conceded dominion over the night - Gotham's criminal elite meet to discuss their miserably limited range of options now that 1) Batman rules the night, and 2) the banks engaged in laundering their dirty money are being knocked over by this Joker chap. Who proceeds to crash their meeting, uninvited, with a proposition for them: pony up half their accumulated funds, and he'll get rid of Batman for them.

Are they skeptical? You bet. Some more than others, with a hood named Gambol (Michael Jai White) proclaiming his outright disrespect for the greasy-faced funny man. (Mistake.)

The Joker proceeds to pad his reputation by announcing that he will carry out a range of malicious acts against the powers that be in Gotham - and then follows through on his promises. Soon his resume reads like a dream document for the perfect agent of chaos, with deeds to his credit including the assassination of city officials, the liberation of government-confiscated ill-gotten funds (ever seen a mountain of money?) and the general disruption of the citizenry's confidence in their own official representatives. Not to mention the very concept of order itself.

Playing itself out along a parallel (and oft-interconnecting) path is the story of Gotham's crusading district attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). This worthy is championed by "the batman" (as Gothamites refer to him) for his fearless and clever outmaneuvering of the organized criminal element - all accomplished without resort to anything extra-legal. Bruce Wayne begins to see Dent as a possible full-scale replacement for Batman, which would clear the way for the billionaire philanthropist portion of his persona to overshadow the shadowy crime fighting one. Not to mention making his romance with Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) feasible once again.

One complication: Dawes is dating Dent. (Isn't it always something?) Furthermore, fate and chaos have some nasty surprises in store for everyone involved in this sharp-edged romantic triangle.

For his part, Christian Bale serves up a fully-seasoned and - excuse the wordplay - absolutely baleful Batfellow at the height of his criminal-intimidating powers. He growls out his commentaries when costumed, even in the presence of those who know who's under the pointy-eared carbon-fiber hood. It's as if, once decked out in the trappings of the alter ego, there's no limiting himself to half-measures.

Speaking of no half-measures, Ledger practices absolute legerdemain as the grease-painted, lip-licking, authentically psychotic regent of Darwinistic social disorder. He shades his character with the vocal stylings of Truman Capote on male hormones. When The Joker laughs maniacally, it's because - we're persuaded - he is indeed a maniac, willing - nay, eager - to die for what he believes in. Which is - refreshingly - totally unrelated to financial gain. We are almost persuaded to join him.

When the book on The Dark Knight is written, Heath Ledger's calculated train wreck of a performance won't be the only chapter included - just the most important, compelling and ultimately tragic one. I can't help but be reminded of another doomed performer in grease paint who departed the stage after a similarly luminous portrayal.

Director Nolan spent $180 million on this movie and it's apparent, with the jaw-dropping stunts of a Broccoli Bond picture enhanced selectively by the full IMAX treatment. Which, of course, you can only appreciate by seeing it at an IMAX theater. When Batman launches himself from a building high above the concrete canyons of Gotham, or faces off against The Joker on a city street, we get the grand sense of being there while history is unmade. Weave in the ominous, bi-tonal score (composed by dream team orchestrators James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer) and you're presented with a spectacle of hypnotic dimensions.

Structurally, the plot follows the action/adventure convention of steadily-building tension; it keeps upping the dramatic stakes until we reach the climax. The final half-hour provides a bonus endgame showdown during which the stakes have never been higher, positing that whatever faith we have in the innate goodness of humanity may in fact be well-founded. (Just keep telling yourself: it's only a movie.) Think of it as the cinematic equivalent of a multiple orgasm.

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