|
I was never a fan of the Adam West style campy Batman, but even in the darker comics the character at least had a sense of wry humor. To cover up this glaring deficiency, Nolan shoots most of the action scenes in this sloppy, quick edit style that's more disorienting than thrilling. The whole tone of the movie is so dark and grim it started to become oppressive after awhile. until it's inconvenient, then he glosses over major plot points with comic book logic. The film is also at leats 30 minutes overlong and Nolan still has no idea how to film an action sequence. 2 1/2 stars.
Unlike say Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke," the Joker in this movie is insane and dangerous, but not particularly charismatic or funny or even all that witty. There are so many great ideas stuffed into the picture but the film never comes together. The Dark Knight is gritty and realistic at times, but also expects us the audience to overlook some huge inconsistencies and major plotholes. Nolan obviously has a vision - he just doesn't have the right story.
The Joker's henchmen are supposedly insane, but they manage to pull off several daring heists. What's worse, Nolan made a movie about a crimefighter who's basically a martial arts, but he can't shoot an action seqeuence to save his life. when confronted with this kind of enemy. Batman also uses cell phones to spy on all of Gotham City; this is just not possible. In this case, the whole really is less than the sum of its parts. You get the idea. If Nolan treated the material like a comic book, none of this illogic would matter.
Heath Ledger makes a great Joker but the whole conception of the character is off. Then the Joker kills them, which seems like it would discourage new recruits. I've seen it in other movies, it's not fresh. The Joker is clearly a metaphor for terrorism here - a destructive force that can't be reasoned with or appeased. For example, at one point the Joker kidnaps two key characters, but the kidnapping occurs entirely off-screen - we're just told the Joker has them and left to wonder how that happened. The movie touches on ideas like the value of torture, rendition, wire-tapping, etc.
By treating Batman like an actual person, Nolan invites the audience to question all of the implausibilities in the story. I guess my big problem is that Nolan wants to have it both ways. He's just a sociopath. It just didn't work for me. But, he treats the entire movie like a realistic crime drama. The grim, realistic portrayal of the Batman mythos is an interesting idea; I'm just not sure it works.
And there are many. It's bad enough he made a movie about a vigilante detective who does no actual detective work. The acting is uniformly good and there are so many great ideas floating around. Even in the comics, Batman was always somewhat larger than life, like a pulp fiction character. I realize I'm an outlier in this one, but The Dark Knight was easily the most overrated movie I've seen in years. Not in this film.
|
Home
Bookmark This Page
View Cart
