The Dark Knight Review

Given the prominence of The Joker in the Batman mythos - he has been the Caped Crusader's archnemesis since 1940, after all - it isn't surprising that once Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer had done the "origins of..." exposition in Batman Begins, the original "killer clown" would be the Villain of the Day in The Dark Knight.  Fans would have walked out of any sequel to the 2005 franchise-rebooter had Nolan decided to feature Mr. Freeze or Poison Ivy, especially if they had paid attention to the ending of Batman Begins, but The Joker is to Batman what Lex Luthor is to Superman - the ultimate in moral and psychological mirror images.

2008's The Dark Knight is a direct continuation of the storyline from Batman Begins, with Bruce Wayne/Batman continuing his idealistic crusade to avenge his parents' murder by fighting crime in Gotham City.

The Return of the Dark Knight

Nolan, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan, opens the film with a stunning bank robbery sequence - shot, along with five other set piece action scenes - using IMAX cameras.  Using grappling hooks, clown masks, guns, grenades and even a school bus, a band of crooks led by The Joker (Heath Ledger) breaks into the mob-owned Gotham National Bank.

Meanwhile, even as most of Gotham City's criminal element cowers in fear whenever the night skies are adorned by Lt. James Gordon's (Gary Oldman) Batsignal from the roof of Police HQ, some strands left hanging from Batman Begins are tied up as the Caped Crusader (Christian Bale) confronts the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy), some Russian Mafia operators and a batch of well-meaning but none too bright Batman imitators in a Gotham City parking garage.

The remaining Mob chiefs who haven't left town altogether are unhappy in Gotham, and not only because there's a new DA in town named Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) or because Batman is waging a one-man vigilante war on their enterprises, but because there's a new player in town - the bizarrely-gussied up and definitely psychotic Joker, who isn't so much interested in being a conventional criminal as he is about wanton destruction and a fixation on exposing the mysterious Batman.

Needless to say, there's a great deal more to the plot of The Dark Knight, such as the updating of the Batsuit by Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), a sojourn to Hong Kong by Bruce Wayne/Batman to capture uber-Mobster Lau (Chin Han), a few "surrogate father" bits between Bruce Wayne and his loyal butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and Bruce's conflicting feelings about his former sweetheart Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and her romantic relationship with the dashing and idealistic new DA, for whom some cops in the Gotham P.D. have a nickname from his days as an Internal Affairs investigator - Two-Face.

No review of The Dark Knight is considered to be complete without some observation about the late Heath Ledger's final complete performance as The Joker, and this one's no exception.  It was, after all, the source of much speculation in regard to Ledger's death; many in the media and the general public often wondered if the darkness of the role played any part in the Australian actor's accidental overdose of prescription drugs in January of 2008.

My Viewpoint:  While some of the story elements directly linked to The Joker are dubious at best - the Jack Nicholson Joker's motivations and modus operandi are clearer in 1989's Batman - Ledger's interpretation of the garishly-dressed and make up-wearing psychopath are perhaps a tad more reality-based.  He clearly has some serious "daddy issues" that are bandied about throughout the film, and he is also clearly a fractured-image of what Batman himself could become if sanity were to release its fragile hold on the emotionally-damaged Bruce Wayne.   And Ledger, who was a consummate actor who liked exploring the depths of his characters no matter who he was playing, is always fascinating to watch.

I'm not sure how much input Ledger had into the look of his Joker; the heretofore well-defined if garish costume and make up of the comics and other incarnation are hinted at but taken "above and beyond" the familiar Joker look and redone in a tortured and sloppy fashion.  Like most actors in movies like this, Ledger probably signed off on the final design but didn't create it.

What Ledger did do was the line readings and body language of his character. and he has to be given credit for making Nolan's vision of The Joker both interesting and believable.  Ledger alternates between deceptively soft-spoken bits ("That which doesn't kill you makes you...stranger.") and the more menacing psycho bits (the various tales about his abusive father, the way in which he talks to Rachel Dawes), and even in scenes where he doesn't say a word, he oozes menace, insanity and a glee for anarchy and destruction.

The Dark Knight is, like most films of the genre, a riff on the price paid by costume-wearing crime fighters with enhanced abilities for their "noble crusade" to defend their cities.  Like Peter Parker in the Spider-Man series, Bruce Wayne is a mere mortal who uses his brain and strength to avenge loved ones lost to crime, but at a huge personal cost.  Unlike Stan Lee's Spider-Man (who owes his "gifts" to the bite of a radioactive spider in the comics), Bob Kane's Batman is a cross between Wyatt Earp and Sherlock Holmes who needs Lucius Fox's tech toys to enhance the training he received from Henri Ducard's League of Shadows.   Thus, unlike his DC Comics stable-mate Superman, he can be (and sometimes is) hurt in battle, as the scars on Bruce Wayne's body certainly prove.

It's not a fight Wayne/Batman wages alone, of course.  He has allies such as Alfred, Jim Gordon, Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent, but essentially he is alone.  He has no time for a personal life, and even if he made the effort to get close to a woman like Rachel, he is fully aware that such a relationship would be a possible death warrant with her name on it.

While far from being perfect (it's a bit overlong at 152 minutes, plus it introduces Two Face one film too early, if the franchise continues), The Dark Knight is still a good sequel to Nolan's Batman Begins.  It's more nuanced and believable than the Burton/Schumacher Batmans, and it is visually stunning (especially on the versions that incorporate the six IMAX sequences), suspenseful and even thought-provoking.