Movie Review: The Dark Knight

    I always get pissed when sports sites run articles that have nothing to do with sports (like NASCAR on ESPN...zing!), but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to comment on maybe the best movie to hit the big screen in years. I would say that The Dark Knight was the best superhero movie I have ever seen, but I would hate to diminish it to such a limiting genre. Calling The Dark Knight a superhero movie is like calling Babe Ruth a baseball player; yes they fit into a specific category, but they really just transcend all categorization.

    What made The Dark Knight so good was the darkness itself. It was simply unwilling to conform to the expectations of the superhero genre. Until this film, the Spiderman series was probably the best of this kind, but in the end you always knew what would happen. Spidey would save the city, get the girl, and do the right thing. In The Dark Knight, we never knew what would happen next and "the right thing" was never an absolute, so much as a question of morality that plagued each of the movie's characters. The sheer depth of the film - attributable in large part to the talent of the cast - breaks the picture from the archaic, Spiderman mold.

    Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhardt, and the sheer genius that was Heath Ledger brought to the story a human layer that these comic book characters had never seen before. I'm not knocking past Batman actors - Nicholson, Keaton and others were pretty damn good. It's just that the entire Dark Knight cast was that much better - and that much more complete. Watching them all play off each other was like watching Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison destroy a secondary - individual geniuses working together toward a common goal. Bale, Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and especially Heath Ledger blended together flawlessly to bring the Batman story to life. But at the heart of it all, it was Ledger who added the darkness that made this film transcendent.

    Ledger's Joker was terrifying, a far cry from the caricature Nicholson portrayed in the original film. While Nicholson's was an iconic depiction of a legendary character, Ledger took a wholly different approach. He made the Joker his own, a brutal madman with no backstory whose sole motive was sadistic entertainment. He stole every minute of screentime and made Batman a secondary character in his own movie. His Joker was darker, more realistic, and - most importantly - did not closely resemble the comic book character we have all come to know. By defying the conventional Joker role, he drove the film further out of the Superhero realm. The Dark Knight, due in large part to Ledger's performance, did not jump off the comic book pages like Spiderman did. Rather, it put its own spin on one of our most cherished stories and made this picture an individual achievement rather than just the next film in the long Batman series.

    I left the theater with two distinct thoughts in my head. First, this was one of the best movies I have ever seen. Second, we lost our next great actor. Heath Ledger's performance will go down as an iconic one; it was just that good. The whole movie was incredible, but it was never better than when Ledger was on the screen. He immersed himself so fully in that character that you had to really strain to recognize anything but the satanic blend of makeup and evil that terrorized Gotham and audiences alike. The Dark Knight, for better or worse, will be Ledger's legacy - and I think it's a good one. With this performance, Ledger singlehandedly delivered The Dark Knight from the Superhero genre into its own brilliant film. He tapped into a layer of darkness that goes far beyond anything Batman or Superman or Spiderman had ever shown us and broke through the comic book world and into a level of twisted reality none of us could have expected. In short, Ledger demolished the barrier between silly fiction and brilliant cinema. That's a hell of a legacy to leave.

    The Dark Knight may go down as the best Superhero movie of all time, as it should. But it's also one of the finest movies of our time, thanks in large part to a talented actor whose death robbed Batman of a foil and robbed us all of a genius.

Comments

[Matt]

You are correct Dave. This was a great film that transcends the comic book genre. Styled more like a crime saga instead of a superhero film, The Dark Knight will be the new gold standard for years to come.

Much of that success has to do with Heath Ledger's iconic performance. The antithesis of all Batman represents, the Joker is an unstoppable, crazed force. There has never been a villain in this type of film that seemed so menacing. I love his quote from the film: "I'm a dog chasing cars. I don't have plans. I just do things. I'm not a schemer." Ledger approached the role in that way. At once so calculated but at the same time unpredictable, his Joker is a terrorist that ultimately gets his greatest pleasure watching the suffering and chaos he causes. Ledger could have been one of the greats, but we are lucky to have this one final masterful performance.