This is my first review, and I know I have a long way to go before I'm posting on AICN. Let me know what you think.
To be perfectly blunt with you, one and all, this has been my most anticipated movie of the year. To my absolute unending surprise, it didn't disappoint.
I've read reviews online and in the printed press. None of them have done it real justice. To be able to have crafted a movie with such little wasted motion, a movie that can shock at the same time it delights this jaded movie-goer and to see characters I've loved since age five (a quarter century ago now) brought to life so expertly on an enormous screen is a revelation.
We'll discuss characters now, and so that you don't think I'm a bleating fanboy, I'll bring up my frist gripe. Chistian Bale plays two characters in this film, and while his Bruce Wayne is perfect - the foppish, rakish billionaire playboy, far more concerned with his Brazillian mobdels and Russian Ballerinas than actually where his next Trust fund cheque comes from - that voice he puts on for Batman is just nasty. I cam imagine how many packets of soothers he went through during filming - he sounds like he will have needed a great deal. Ok, not really much of a gripe - in fact, it's really just nitpicking. Apart from that, Batman is the shoot-him-down-he-climbs-back-up, unstoppable violence machine he needs to be to come to grips with the scum of Gotham. Little effort taken that isn't applied with efficacy and brutality to his foes. And the foes he fights - well now.
The Joker. Heath Ledger has had the most ridiculous ammount of press surrounding him over the past few months. I won't go so far as to say that he deserves an Oscar for this performance. But he's good. Like, really good. A quote from one of my favourite comic books, Hitman, comes to mind. Tommy Monaghan meets the Joker for the first time... " and there he sits, just poisoning the world with his presence." This is what Heath Ledger does. He becomes the Joker, and makes the world a worse place just by being in it. The scene where he's sitting in jail (not a spoiler, it's in the trailer)for example. No one wants to be near him. He is a taint on humanity - just like the Joker I love to hate in comics. The performance he gives is just the right amount of "doing it because I want to", setting fire to things not because burning them will further his cause, but because he likes to watch them burn. The Joker's plan, as revealed in the final act of the film, places whoever wrote the Joker squarely in Alan Moore territory, with a nice little nod to Moore's seminal work, The Killing Joke. Ok, that's hyperbole, but he is pretty good.
Harvey Dent is also done very well. I didn't know Aaron Eckhart actually had depth. I do now. As the pure-white district attorney he puts on a great show of knowing that if he doesn't follow the rules, he'll end up achieving nothing. And then, in his inevitable transformation into Two-Face (with some of the best CGI make-up I've ever seen) he follows the twisted ruleset that that individual places on himself to a tee. Nothing without the coin toss. And the coin is done very nicely, first as an idiosyncrasy of the District Attorney, "making his own luck" and then as a fixation point for the now-twisted Two Face.
Chief Gordon - here there be (mild) spoilers!
Summary - a few more spoilers.
The story winds a little, but never wastes time. Batman is portrayed as reactive, accurately, responding to crisis after crisis decisively and with finality.
Recommend this film to pretty much anyone. It can be a little gruesome at points - under twelves probably won't sleep great that night. But why are you bringing your kids when you should be bringing your mates?
To be perfectly blunt with you, one and all, this has been my most anticipated movie of the year. To my absolute unending surprise, it didn't disappoint.
I've read reviews online and in the printed press. None of them have done it real justice. To be able to have crafted a movie with such little wasted motion, a movie that can shock at the same time it delights this jaded movie-goer and to see characters I've loved since age five (a quarter century ago now) brought to life so expertly on an enormous screen is a revelation.
We'll discuss characters now, and so that you don't think I'm a bleating fanboy, I'll bring up my frist gripe. Chistian Bale plays two characters in this film, and while his Bruce Wayne is perfect - the foppish, rakish billionaire playboy, far more concerned with his Brazillian mobdels and Russian Ballerinas than actually where his next Trust fund cheque comes from - that voice he puts on for Batman is just nasty. I cam imagine how many packets of soothers he went through during filming - he sounds like he will have needed a great deal. Ok, not really much of a gripe - in fact, it's really just nitpicking. Apart from that, Batman is the shoot-him-down-he-climbs-back-up, unstoppable violence machine he needs to be to come to grips with the scum of Gotham. Little effort taken that isn't applied with efficacy and brutality to his foes. And the foes he fights - well now.
The Joker. Heath Ledger has had the most ridiculous ammount of press surrounding him over the past few months. I won't go so far as to say that he deserves an Oscar for this performance. But he's good. Like, really good. A quote from one of my favourite comic books, Hitman, comes to mind. Tommy Monaghan meets the Joker for the first time... " and there he sits, just poisoning the world with his presence." This is what Heath Ledger does. He becomes the Joker, and makes the world a worse place just by being in it. The scene where he's sitting in jail (not a spoiler, it's in the trailer)for example. No one wants to be near him. He is a taint on humanity - just like the Joker I love to hate in comics. The performance he gives is just the right amount of "doing it because I want to", setting fire to things not because burning them will further his cause, but because he likes to watch them burn. The Joker's plan, as revealed in the final act of the film, places whoever wrote the Joker squarely in Alan Moore territory, with a nice little nod to Moore's seminal work, The Killing Joke. Ok, that's hyperbole, but he is pretty good.
Harvey Dent is also done very well. I didn't know Aaron Eckhart actually had depth. I do now. As the pure-white district attorney he puts on a great show of knowing that if he doesn't follow the rules, he'll end up achieving nothing. And then, in his inevitable transformation into Two-Face (with some of the best CGI make-up I've ever seen) he follows the twisted ruleset that that individual places on himself to a tee. Nothing without the coin toss. And the coin is done very nicely, first as an idiosyncrasy of the District Attorney, "making his own luck" and then as a fixation point for the now-twisted Two Face.
Chief Gordon - here there be (mild) spoilers!
Gordon is done well as well - I always knew him as the guy who would fake his own death even to his wife to pull off a scheme. Although, the resemblance between Gary Oldman in the makeup and Ned Flanders is scary.
Summary - a few more spoilers.
The story winds a little, but never wastes time. Batman is portrayed as reactive, accurately, responding to crisis after crisis decisively and with finality.
The Joker, on the other hand, seems to be rambling from one improvisation to the next, until you realise that the plan he had all along was executed with (almost) perfection. And the soliliquy towards the end where the Joker goes on about the interdependancy of Batman and himself is great stuff - very telling on the dark side of the Dark Knight. The very ending itself - with Gordon speaking to his son about why he's loosed the dogs on Batman - is nicely symbolic of the fact that Batman is the only proper hero, that i've experienced, who can be a good guy while doing bad guy stuff. It's also an awesome way of actually introducing the movie title. Which you realise, only then, wasn't revealed at all until then.
Recommend this film to pretty much anyone. It can be a little gruesome at points - under twelves probably won't sleep great that night. But why are you bringing your kids when you should be bringing your mates?
