THE DARK KNIGHT (PG-13)  ***1/2

Directed by Christopher Nolan. 153 minutes.

Starring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Maggie Gylenhaal, Eric Roberts, William Fichtner and Gary Oldman. Released by Warner Brothers Pictures.

 

At the risk of being publicly beheaded by rabid, foam-mouthed comic book fans, drawn and quartered or banished from ever reviewing another film based on a comic book, I hereby proclaim that Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is neither the most important work of cinema of the new millennium nor the film to replace Citizen Kane atop the next Sight and Sound film poll. That being said, it’s pretty damn good. The buzz for the film has been near-apocalyptic during the past few weeks and people, most of whom have not seen the film, are all certain that Heath Ledger will become the second actor to receive a posthumous award at next year’s Oscars. Well, the film near lives up to its hype – a few scenes drag and a few others left me slightly scratching my head because they whizzed by so quickly, but to no great detriment – and, I hate to say it but Ledger’s frighteningly sinister portrayal of The Joker is just the type of all-out performance that the Academy loves to snub.

 

The film looks great. Not a surprise as Nolan, who first dazzled me with his brilliant Memento and has at least left me satisfied with every picture he has directed since, is phenomenal with composing a shot and setting up a scene. The film is dark, but in a pretty way rather than a grimy one. Gotham looks less like an overcast New York as it does a glass-enclosed city of the future in The Dark Knight, which comes close to dethroning Tim Burton’s 1989 film as the best of the series. Villains lurk around every corner, but they are the type of crime epics, such as Michael Mann’s Heat or a Martin Scorsese crime film as opposed to men in tight leather garbs that we expect to see. This is, after all, a comic book movie, right? Sort of.

 

Nolan, first with 2005’s Batman Begins, and now with this sequel has taken the franchise into darker, much darker, waters. Batman/Bruce Wayne is not so much a troubled man who does good as he is a vigilante who tows the line between a superhero and a man bent on bloodlust. He – that would be Christian Bale – even speaks in a snarl of a whisper. Batman fills the role that the city’s white nights – that would be Gary Oldman as a dedicated police detective and Aaron Eckhart as the city’s new DA, Harvey Dent – cannot fill. He skips over moral quandaries and does the dirty work. He’s Dirty Harry in tights.

 

The film’s setup is long, elaborate and intricate. In other words, I won’t go into it, but suffice it to say that Dent has put a hurtin’ on Gotham’s organized crime families, while Batman questions the continued need for his presence. All of this is set up in a series of quick, tense sequences. The best of these scenes, of course, is the introduction of Ledger’s Joker, who pulls off one of the best bank heist sequences in recent movie history. Even better is a magic trick he pulls at the expense of a mob henchman. Ledger inhabits the role completely. This isn’t a star hamming it up as a villain by sneering, frothing or making crazy eyes. The actor, whose short body of work points to his potential greatness, really takes over this role, making The Joker near demonic. It’s his questions posed to our hero about whether the will to do good can be possessed, under given circumstances, by evil. As immoral as he is, Ledger’s Joker becomes the film’s moral center.

 

Everyone else here does good work as well. Although they are not given a whole lot to do here, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman give a certain depth to their short on-screen moments, rather than do a big-name-actor-phone-in and Gary Oldman, who typically plays the mad-eyed villain, does some nice, subtle work here. Aaron Eckhart could experience a bigger break-out with his Harvey Dent role. If The Joker poses the moral question to Batman, then Dent is the example. I won’t give away what happens here, but readers of the comic book likely know of Dent’s fate.

 

It’s been a better-than-average summer for big-budget fare. Both Iron Man and Indiana Jones were fun and Pixar’s Wall-E was a flat-out masterpiece. But Nolan’s Knight is among the season’s most ambitious. On the surface it’s a comic book film/crime epic with characters long at the forefront of the popular culture world. The film, by standards set long ago by Hollywood, should be a hack job filled with exposition, explosions, one-liners, more exposition, confrontations and the setup for another film. But Nolan goes for something deeper here and is more interested in moral dilemmas and complex psychological drama, rather than just cinematic spectacle, though that’s to be found in the film as well. The Dark Knight is a bold new step in a genre not known for taking bold steps or, for that matter, any steps in different directions at all. It’s a superlative summer movie.