The Dark Knight...Good But Not Great!

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The Dark Knight...Good But Not Great!

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As a long time Batman fan, I was predisposed to liking the new movie The Dark Knight, so why isn't my favorite movie of all time?  Let me tell you.

I'm a big fan of Christopher Nolan's style for this movie, (after all, isn't Batman supposed to be a dark forboding character?) but style isn't everything.  The Dark Knight opens (more or less) where Batman Begins left off, Batman in fighting the mob and corruption in Gotham City, and, while the public at large seems to embrace him, the police are still ambivalent toward him.  A new D.A., Harvery Dent (played wonderfully by Aaron Eckhart) has stepped into the city's spotlight as the new 'white knight' of the city, although he's making powerful enemies within the gangs.  As Batman struggles with the idea that he may no longer be needed in Gotham, a new villian appears to aid the mob in killing him...that's the Joker!

Now, I've read all the reviews and seen all the reports, but after seeing the movie for myself, I have to say, that this is a good comic book movie, not a great comic book movie.  Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne is pretty good, but his Batman is a bit too forced for my liking.  The voice that he affects while in the cape and cowl sounds too much like someone pretending to be Satanically possessed and not all that scary.  And, while Heath Ledger's Joker is mean, crazy and psychotic, is it really an Oscar worthy performance?  I really don't think so!  After all, this Joker isn't really the Joker that all of us fans have known and loved for decades, this Joker has no real backstory, and what we do find out about him makes him more of a normal maniac and less like the Joker.  It's almost like the filmmakers decided that one strange origin story was all that the audience would buy into, well, if I'm willing to set aside disbelief about a man in a bat suit jumping for highrise buildings, I think I can stay with you if the Joker's a criminal who's fallen into chemical that turned his skin white, his hair green, paralyzed the muscles in his face into a perpetual smile and warped his mind...after all, that's the Joker, this is some psycho in clown makeup.

I'm sure, at this point, you're saying that I'm a nitpicking fanboy, and that's probably true on some level, but I still think that The Dark Knight could have been a truely great movie.  It was about 45 minutes too long, the mafia money laundering angle, and the entire sequence that takes place in Hong Kong could probably have been eliminated.  The entire Harvey Dent/Two Face storyline felt wasted here,  Aaron Eckhart really carries this movie, the 'white knight' Dent fighting against the odds, and then losing both his love, his looks and his mind is the best character arc in the movie, and the makeup effects made Two Face come to life for the first time (Apologies to Tommy Lee Jones).

Clocking in at two and half hours, The Dark Knight is too long, the tone of the movie is great, but the story felt a bit stilted and forced in places ("Hey guys, if we go to Hong Kong, we can drop Batman from a tall building and it'll look really cool!"  "How does that add to the story?"  "Who cares!  It'll look really cool!"), and while Ledger is good as the Joker, Oscar worthy?  Probably not.  Again, this is a good comic book movie, not a great comic book movie, if you want a great comic book movie, head to the next theatre and check out Iron Man.