THE DARK
KNIGHT

Review by E.C.McMullen Jr.

THE DARK KNIGHT - 2012 Warner Bros. Rated: Argentina: 13 / Australia: M / Finland: K-14 / Germany: 16 / Norway: 15 / Peru: 14 / Portugal: M/12 / Spain: 13 / Sweden: 15 / UK: 15 / USA: PG-13

Wondrous. You know, I've wrote thousands of reviews over the years and I don't think I've ever described a film as wondrous.

Visually, I have to attribute this to two things, Director Christopher Nolan (MEMENTO, BATMAN BEGINS) and his Director of Photography, Wally Pfister (MEMENTO, BATMAN BEGINS). Wally has been with Chris since his first feature and has worked on every movie Chris has made since then. The two men share a common vision of what a movie should be: BIG.

Like BATMAN BEGINS before it, THE DARK KNIGHT seems to fill every inch of the massive theater screen. This was not a movie where the director allowed a voice at the back of his head to remind him that he had to visually compensate for the eventual dimensions of a 4:3 television screen. Even at the start of the film, a bank robbery, this widescreen presentation is actually presented AS a 2.35:1 widescreen presentation, and not as a widescreen movie where all the action takes place in a 4:3 box, leaving unused margins. There is nothing unused on the screen here and I haven't experienced this kind of "Wow! factor since I was a kid watching Star Wars in the theater. Don't get me wrong, I've seen plenty of widescreen movies before, just not ones that adroitly used the screen real estate so wisely.

Or so wondrously!

Then there's the action, and in as much as a director is a storyteller, Chris Nolan unveils the harsh life of Gotham City. A place where the citizens turned their backs for years and ignored the encoraching brutal crime as it filled their streets and their lives.

"This city deserves a better class of criminal!"
- The Joker

Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale: AMERICAN PSYCHO, EQUILIBRIUM, BATMAN BEGINS) goes out as Batman nearly every night to fight crime, but Gotham is huge and despite his wealth of resources, he's still only one man. Bruce also acts based on a tragic obsession: as a boy he saw his Mother and Father were shot to death. So like Spiderman (who came along 23 years after Bats), Bruce can never fully enjoy being Batman say, the way Oliver Queen can enjoy being The Green Arrow, Clark Kent can enjoy being Superman, or Hellboy can enjoy being a demon spawn from the eternal burning depths of Hell. On the other hand, Bruce isn't racked with eternal self-loathing the way Spawn is. But still, he's only one man.

So enter Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart: THE CORE, PAYCHECK), Gotham City's newest and most dashing District Attorney. Harvey is the real deal and isn't afraid to go after the scum of Gotham to clean up the city and return it to a semblance of decency. However, between Harvey and the Batman, organized scum is really feeling the pinch. Things get even worse for the thugs when a new psychopathic criminal enters the field and starts stealing money from mob banks. Said psycho is none other than The Joker (Heath Ledger: THE BROTHERS GRIMM), who enters a private meeting of the mob, announces that he is the one stealing their money, tells them that he won't give the money back, and then kills one of them. Now that his territory is marked, he offers his services in true Hacker fashion. The beleagured mobsters don't know what to think, so he leaves his card.

Soon the Joker is terrorising Gotham and nobody else knows what to think either. The cops can't get a trace on the guy, Harvey Dent can't get a hold of the guy, and Batman can't catch him. The crimes grow deadlier and more outlandish and the Joker laughs through it all, making each crime an unforseen turn of events and never repeating his pattern. He has no pattern. Truly a Wildcard (aka the Joker in the deck) in every sense of the word. What no one understands is that, for The Joker, there is no end game to the crime. He doesn't rob banks to enrich himself with money. He robs banks to rob banks. He doesn't kidnap people to hold them for ransom. He kidnaps people to terrorize the ones who love them. The Joker holds the city of Gotham hostage for no other reason but that he wants everyone who lives there to feel like a hostage. The Crime IS the endgame.

Chris Nolan brings all the subplots together in a grand finale ending that is smashing! What's more, the very dark and nihilistic nature of THE DARK KNIGHT should likely make you leave the theater depressed, but instead I came away knowing I had watched and been entertained by the nobility of emotional sacrifice that some people are willing to make for strangers, for the benefit of humanity, or even just the city that they love. Or if nothing else, out of a profound obligation to children they will never know, that will never have to experience the unerasable memory of watching their own parents shot to death before their eyes.

THE DARK KNIGHT is not the TV or Tim Burton cartoon, it's one of the most powerful, action packed, shocking, emotionally satisfying, dark, and uplifting movies ever made. It is simply, wondrous!

Five Shriek Girls.

This review copyright 2008 E.C.McMullen Jr.



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