So very close
Nolan’s ‘Knight’ nearly reaches Batman perfection
‘The Dark Knight’
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart
Rating: PG-13
Grade: 4 Globes
In “Dark Knight,” director Christopher Nolan’s approach is to establish
his principals quickly, then toss them into a lottery hopper filled
with hand grenades.
Those principals are the Dark Knight himself (Christian Bale) and the
Joker (Heath Ledger) along with police Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman, in
a thankfully beefier role) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron
Eckhart).
Nolan’s greatest accomplishment is juggling this powerhouse cast,
giving each actor his moment, while managing to even save room for
Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman as Bruce Wayne’s surrogate fathers
Alfred Pennyworth and Lucius Fox. (Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces Katie
Holmes as The Girl, and fails to make the role any more memorable than
her predecessor.)
Eckhart and Oldman inject life where the script fails to in their
turns as the idealist public crusader and the weathered cop. Meanwhile,
Bale, like so many Batmen before him, is stuck with the task of just
looking serious all the time.
The star, of course, is Ledger. His Joker is an agent of chaos who
lives, as Caine puts it in one of the film’s better lines, only to
watch the world burn. In his limping, erratic portrayal, the late actor
takes the character ten steps beyond Jack Nicholson’s kid’s stuff
version, and turns him into a gruesome jihadist clown unencumbered by
ideology.
But that’s where the high-mindedness ends in “Dark Knight” (though
an odd scene involving Freeman and a covert citizen surveillance system
has its own obvious relevance). There are stunts and special effects to
get to, after all.
Unfortunately, they’re a mixed bag.
Nolan’s action sequences — in particular his big car chase — reflect
the chaotic nature of their instigators: Though they convey real
terror, they’re hard to follow. Someone, it seems, could use another
viewing of “The French Connection.”
Still, “The Dark Knight” succeeds as a house of horrors-roller coaster hybrid.
It’s not a new Batman, but it is perhaps the most perfect version of the Batman we first encountered in “Sin City”
mastermind Frank Miller’s 1986 comic, “The Dark Knight Returns.” In
that story, we end with Batman transformed from superhero to wannabe
fascist dictator, left amassing an army beneath the city.
That Nolan doesn’t quite go there is to be expected, given the
constraints of making a big-money studio feature. That he comes so
close, is a notable accomplishment itself.