The Dark Knight - pros and cons

First let me say I recognize that it is almost heresy to give The Dark Knight a bad review at this point. One look at rotten tomatoes demonstrates the fact that the critics fear Batman as much as the criminals of Gotham. It has become movie-critic-politically correct to embrace the ambitious filmmaking behind the new Batmans, and even more politically correct to hail Heath Ledger as a fallen master. Some of this is fair, and some of it is not. In totality, The Dark Knight is an enjoyable and ambitious rollercoaster ride of a film, but it is also one of those rare productions whose strengths are its weaknesses.

This is not to say The Dark Knight is a bad film. It has a lot of good things going for it. It plays out more like Bond-meets-Godfather than a superhero film, and in many ways this change in formula is welcome. There is skydiving in China, double-cross bank robberies, dead bond girls, mob infighting, and brand new technologies unleashed by Batman's tech-whiz Mr. Fox (Morgan Freeman) to make every new action scene interesting. All of this surrounds the best part of the film: the Joker played by Heath Ledger, whose performance has lived up to and in some ways even surpassed the hype surrounding it. Ledger certainly steals the show, but just barely from an also dominating performance by Aaron Eckhart as Harvy Dent. Dent is like Batman's alter ego, and in this film much more interesting than Batman himself. To say more about his character would be a spoiler for some and painfully obvious to others. Suffice to say he has two character arcs, both of them fascinating and effective. Indeed, Harvy Dent and the Joker could have easily been their own movie, and perhaps should have been.

Which is where we come to the negative. For a Batman film, the filmmakers don't seem to be very interested in Batman this time around. In Batman Begins, the character was given the richest and most effective development out of any of the several attempts. Christian Bale soared as both Bruce Wayne and Batman, and Katie Holmes had remarkable chemistry with both forms as Rachel Dawes. When we saw Bale look at Holmes, we saw a man feeling love, conflict, and pain. This is not achieved between Bale and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who has taken over for Holmes. Gyllenhaal brings little development to the character and simply doesn't seem to fit. This results in the other characters' feelings towards her coming across as unconvincing. Bale himself seems to have missed the mark on this film as well, but a lot of this might be blamed on the decisions made by the sound crew and screenwriters. For sound, when Batman speaks in this film, it sounds like he is trying way too hard to sound tough. He had that menacingly darker voice in Batman Begins, but it was scaled back just slightly, and his dialogue in the original was limited to words that were deserving of so much vehemence. In the sequel, Bale's blaring vocals distract from his performance and dialogue as Batman. It feels artificial, contrived, out of place -- as does his new batsuit. What were they thinking there? The original batsuit was glam-goth gorgeous; the best Batman has ever looked. The new look is not a welcome one. For screenwriting, Batman is given a lot of screen time, but most it involves beating up henchmen and getting involved in car chases. There is not much character involved in these scenes -- just mindless, albeit fascinating, action – or, more appropriately, reaction.

Everything considered, it should come as no surprise that this film's strengths take place away from Batman, which is a shame for a fan of the character (me) and a blessing for people who normally don't care for superheroes. This film explores with much greater interest the psychology of the criminal mind, the road to becoming a sociopath, and the roots of evil. The material in this film is so complicated and thought-provoking that it more than makes up for its other shortcomings. It is much smarter than a superhero film, but perhaps too smart for its own good. After every avenue is explored we still want to see the dark avenger take center stage. In this film, the dark knight is little more than a device to keep the plot moving, a character who is dominated by what happens instead of a character that is defined by his actions. "It's what I do that defines me," Batman said to Rachel Dawes in one of the best moments of Batman Begins. In The Dark Knight, Batman doesn't do much. He reacts to the master strokes made by the enemy, but doesn't seem to have much game of his own. He is lead through a labyrinth of situations in which he is given very little choice. Towards the climax, he finally does make some tough choices -- the toughest -- but the weight of them is bogged down by the fact that his character has so little development throughout this two and a half hour film. The filmmakers obviously recognized this when considering one of the final scenes where Gary Oldman (another fine performance as Gordon) has to explain to his son the gravity and depth of Batman's final choices. Classic case of telling instead of showing. Not something you'd expect from a film with the third best rating of all time on imdb.com

Is The Dark Knight worth watching? Absolutely. With so much crammed into this film it also has the potential to be much better on a second viewing. For now, I feel like I watched a great movie that had Batman in it, rather than a Batman movie with a lot of great supporting elements. Maybe this will change on a second viewing, but for now this will have to suffice. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it, but with all the Batman orgies going around I just figured I'd publish this counterpoint for good measure.

You've probably seen the trailer too many times already, but just in case you haven't: