Spoiled Reviews

One thing that I love about comic books is the versatility they provide for the artists. As long as a few simple rules are followed, anybody with a fresh idea can put their unique spin on an iconic character. That’s something Batman Begins and The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan (and his brother Jonathan, I suppose, who helped write the script) understand better than anyone else who’s brought Batman to the big screen (with the possible exceptions of Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski of the animated Mask of the Phantasm). He’s willing to take the chances he needs to make a good movie but is smart enough to stick to the rules that Tim Burton threw out with the bathwater, despite his resoundingly successful stylization of the character (more on this a little later).

And that brings us to an awkward point in this review. Here at Spoiled Reviews we realize that our site appeals to those who wish to know all the story particulars before they see the movie. However I plead with you, just this once, don’t spoil for yourself what is the best movie so far this year and one of the best movies of the decade. For those who must, and for those of you have already seen the darn thing, don’t worry, spoilers, and reviews of those spoilerific elements, are coming at you in spades.

So here’s my problem with Burton’s Batman. They killed the Joker, which to me, and to many others, is the biggest taboo you could break in the Batman universe (I realize that Batman letting Ra’s al Ghul die in Batman Begins is equally egregious to some but I think it works in building the character, especially having seen The Dark Knight). Batman needs the Joker as his ultimate antithesis; for Batman to defeat the Joker would be tantamount to suggesting that Batman has defeated crime and chaos altogether. And that’s really what the Joker embodies in The Dark Knight; anarchy in opposition to Batman’s attempts at order.

The film starts with a bank heist that is tense and uncomfortable, but darkly funny. It introduces Chris, John and, most importantly, Heath Ledger’s amoral and riveting take on the Joker character. Painted red and white under a droopy rubber clown mask, the Joker has each one of his henchman off the next as the robbery proceeds so that none ever knows that the guy who planned the job is actually in the bank with them. It also leaves him free to take off with the money alone, unhindered by hangers on. Ledger’s performance is literally staggering. The assault of his whirlwind performance almost knocked me out of my seat. The special attention that went into crafting this characterization has been, and will continue to be, much lauded unfortunately due mostly to Mr. Ledger’s tragic passing. And while it’s unfair to compare his performance to Jack Nicholson’s (or Mark Hamill’s for that matter) the fearless intensity, unflinching humanity and utter lack of humanism he puts into this creature of a man allows him to stand on his own, unshadowed by previous incarnations. It’s the redefinition of an icon, just as Batman Begins was for the Caped Crusader.

As it turns out, for plot purposes, that bank the Joker robbed was filled with mob money, and lots of it. Lieutenant Jim Gordon is busy chasing traced bills to find any other mob banks in Gotham so the burden of solving this particular crime falls upon the shoulders of the world’s greatest detective. Unfortunately, Batman brushes off this made-up madman as just another in a string of masked “vigilantes” his presence has inspired. In a bit of a surprise, Cillian Murphy reprises his role as the Scarecrow battling a team of gun-toting gang-fighters dressed in bat suits, but Batman ties them up just like any other common criminal, marking himself as the one vigilante worthy of freedom. These other “crime fighters” get in the way, but Batman’s glad the message is getting through.

Batman’s ignorance and miscomprehension of the Joker’s intentions leads to trouble. He has big plans for Gotham city but he plays his cards close. His tactics are intricate and cruel. He’s a new kind of terrorist, one who’s intent on getting others players into his sick games. In one brilliant scene, the Joker strolls into a meeting of the mob bosses and quickly dispatches one heavy with what he describes as a magic trick. He makes a pencil disappear into the guys’ eye socket. Ta-da! It‘s bowel-turning but simple and direct. That one moment sends a terrifying message to the mob and the audience; this character is capable of plunging the depths of depravity with the flick of a wrist.

He offers the mob a deal to solve their problems with the cops; a dead Batman for half their money. The Joker has a competitor of sorts in Lau, a money launderer who runs a corporation in Hong Kong. He has clandestinely taken all the mob’s cash out of the country, for what he claims is safekeeping. Gordon had gotten too close to the banks, Lau argues, and hoarding it in out of the country under the control of a neutral party will keep it safe. Organized crime chooses Lau, the villain they understand, over the purple-suited lunatic with the scarred grin.

Lieutenant Gordon is frustrated by his inability to get close to any of the crime syndicates without a snitch tipping them off. Even though he doesn’t fully appreciate it, he’s got some help from Gotham’s new District Attorney, Harvey Dent. He’s a white knight politician, (a pun that is not ignored) and he’s willing to risk his own life to clean up his city. A witness pulls a gun on him in the courtroom, but it misfires; without flinching Harvey takes the gun and decks the guy, quipping to defendent Sal Maroni (Eric Roberts at full smarm) that next time he tries to assassinate the D.A. he should buy American.

Aaron Eckhart plays the savior well. Dent seems little more than a pretty face and a slogan, but Bruce Wayne’s old squeeze Rachel Dawes (the lovely Maggie Gyllenhall replacing Katie Holmes in the role) sees something more in him. She recognizes the potential for a hero the city can look to with unmixed emotions, a cure for the disease that necessitates Batman. Bruce Wayne sees it too, and hopes that Dent’s rise will allow him to someday put away the cape and cowl, and settle down to a normal life. His plans for the future include Rachel but she’s chosen Harvey as her lover instead. She wants a hero who is helping to build a community in Gotham, not one who’s continually patching it up.

Batman puts his hope and trust in the crusading D.A. even though Dent doesn’t fully understand Gotham’s Dark Knight. He is willing to let Batman go to Hong Kong and kidnap Lau to get him under police custody. Bruce Wayne uses some business connections to get his confidant and business manager, Lucius Fox, into Lau’s Hong Kong headquarters. This allows Fox to plant an EMP emitting cell phone which eases Batman’s entry and exit. Christopher Nolan understands that these scenes will remind adult viewers of current political difficulties facing our rule-abiding government in dealing with foreign nationals using the system to skirt justice. The film makers never applaud Batman’s particular brand of globe-trotting fascism. Although they remind us how nice it might be to have a vigilante with no borders fighting on the side of good, this movie truly understands that “good” can often be opposite sides of the same coin.

For the trip, Batman commissions a new suit. He wants one that is lighter and will allow him, for the first time on the big screen, to turn his head from side to side. An early fight scene is staged with an intentional awkwardness. As Batman beats criminals to a pulp, Nolan highlights the masked head facing directly out from square shoulders. The new suit allows the character, and the filmmakers, to really have fun with a hero who can do anything on the printed page, but, until now, was limited by a rubber cowl on the silver screen.

While Batman is out of town, the Joker solidifies his position in the Gotham underworld. Using a team of escaped mental patients, he convinces the crime syndicates that he was right in putting the blame for their troubles on Batman. Lau agrees to sing like a bird for immunity and a plane ticket home. The big bosses will be able to post bail, but the mid level guys will have to take a sentence, cleaning up Gotham’s streets for at least 18 months. The mob knows it won’t survive so they take the Joker up on his original offer to kill Batman. The villain publicly demands that Batman reveal his true identity, under threat of continuing his string of grisly murders if he doesn’t.

He starts attacking city officials, killing the Police Commissioner and a judge, but missing out on his real prize, Harvey Dent. Dent, in attendance at a fundraiser Bruce Wayne throws in his honor, gets stuffed in a closet for safe keeping as Batman first encounters the Clown Prince of Crime. But the Joker’s attack on the party, while seemingly off the cuff and unplanned, has great calculation to it, as does every plot the Joker thickens. While he spends much of his time cackling at guests and telling obviously BS stories about the origin of his scars, he silently notes that Batman leaves him in a penthouse full of Gotham’s biggest players to save a plummeting Rachel Dawes. The Joker leaves without harming anyone else, but with a greater knowledge of his adversary’s human weakness, and who his loved ones are.

It’s these thoughtful details that set Nolan’s movie apart from other superhero pictures. While others paint with bright colors and broad strokes, Nolan uses muted tones and a series of intimate, truthful moments highlighted by stunning (and realistic) action set pieces. The heart of the movie is in the scenes between Bruce Wayne and his butler Alfred. Michael Caine brings out the best in Christian Bale, making these theme-highlighting conversations intriguing and lighthearted when they could be overly portentous.

The Joker attempts to bring down the mayor with a sly plan involving an egg timer controlling a window shade and stolen cop uniforms. (All of the Joker’s plans are low rent; gasoline bombs and makeshift timers) He only fails by the bravery of Jim Gordon who leaps in front of the bullet. The movie tells us he’s dead, but don’t worry Batfans, Gordon comes back to claim the title of Commissioner before the credits roll.

In the meantime though, Harvey Dent and Batman are alone in facing the true threat to Gotham, the Joker. They realize too late that just as Batman made the traditional police force obsolete so has the Joker ousted the traditional criminal.

Batman, staggered by the spate of violent murders and his inability to do anything about them, chooses to turn himself in to quell the public’s outcries that Batman must bow to the Joker’s will and announce his secret identity. Dent beats him to the punch though, announcing at a press conference that he is Batman, allowing the real Dark Knight to keep to the shadows and wait for the Joker’s next move. This culminates in the ubiquitous but never ordinary chase scene as the Batmobile chases the Joker chases a police convoy through the Gotham city streets.

A small, but fascinating moment occurs towards the end of the sequence after Batman has totaled the tumbler and comes after the Joker on his Bat-pod motorcycle. The Joker waddles through the streets firing what sounds like a very large-caliber automatic weapon, screaming at Batman to run him over with the motorcycle. It’s a game for him and, in a twisted way, the rules are fair. He’s just as willing to die as he is willing to kill. He wins by corrupting souls, either the city’s or its saviors’. Batman won’t cross that line, and ends up crashing the Bat-pod.

At this moment though, Jim Gordon makes his triumphant return and takes the Joker into custody. Dent’s ruse is exposed and Gotham city breathes a sigh of relief, which sadly is to be cut short. Despite all they have been through with the madman, neither Batman, Gordon nor Dent fully appreciate the breadth or complexity of the Joker’s machinations. His henchmen, aided by a couple of crooked cops, capture Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes while everyone’s guard is down. They take them to warehouses on opposite ends of the city, each filled with explosives and a timer. The Joker gives Batman both addresses but time enough to save only one. Does he save the man who can give him a chance at a normal life, or the woman who he wants that life with? And he has to make this choice ignorant of Dent’s marriage proposal and Rachel’s intention to accept.

In the end, in a brilliant choice by the filmmakers but a tragic one by our hero, Batman lets the Dark Knight win over Bruce Wayne and saves Dent. Gordon goes after Rachel, but he isn’t the hero and thus arrives too late. Dent is injured in the explosion, receiving the horrific facial scarring we all knew he was due for. This works so brilliantly because it places Harvey/Two-Face directly between Batman and the Joker thematically and in the plot. He is the ultimate combination of the two, ordered chaos, trusting only a flip of his double-faced coin to deal out twisted justice. Duality of personality is popular subject in all of Nolan’s films, (he made The Prestige for God’s sake) but here it takes a special place with Two-Face. The construction of the the face itself (how they were able to achieve the visual of a man with half the flesh burned off his face I have no idea) is disgusting as is the destruction of a city’s greatest hope.

With Rachel dead, the Joker has an easy enough time turning Harvey from hero to villain. His gut-busting stint in the clink turns out to be a simple ploy to break out with Lau and get the mob’s money back. A few hospital bomb threats later, and he’s got Harvey/Two-Face alone in a room with a fragile mind to warp. He goes after the city’s soul too, announcing that he will set off that mystery hospital bomb if someone doesn’t dispatch a clog in his gears, a man who claims to know Batman’s identity. The Joker doesn’t want to know anymore, he’s got his prize; Dent.

Harvey goes after some personal revenge with his coin and a revolver, while the Joker sets in motion his greatest scheme yet. Two ferries, one filled with convicts, the other with average citizens, are packed with gasoline drums and remote detonators. He’s given each boat’s crew the other boat’s detonator, giving the people onboard an hour to choose. If they pull the trigger first they live, but with bloody hands. If neither boat pulls the trigger before the hour’s up, they both get it. The people, after much tense deliberation, put their faith in their city’s Dark Knight, and he comes through for them, capturing the Joker just in time. (He only does this by turning every phone in the city into sonar emitters which gives him a Big Brother like power over Gotham; he’s responsible with it this one time, but Pandora’s box has been opened).

But lest you think this is one of those superhero movies in which the hero beats back evil and returns the city to the way it once was, there’s a catch, as there always seems to be with the Joker, and yet another choice. Harvey Dent has gone on a murderous spree that, though it has left him dead, would destroy his reputation and any hope for Gotham’s salvation. He’s killed cops, drivers, bartenders, all seeming innocents, on his path to revenge. He had captured now Commissioner Gordon’s entire family and was threatening to flip the coin on them all, treating the man who couldn’t save his fiancée to a similar punishment he has had to endure. These are not the actions of a Gotham’s White Knight. But they could fit with the character of a Dark Knight.

In the end, to keep the city from crushing emotionally under the direst of betrayals from their elected hero, Batman takes the burden of Harvey’s crimes upon himself, allowing Gordon to put the blame the Bat, keeping the flame of hope for Gotham alive. As Gordon tells his son, Batman has to do this, because while he may be the hero Gotham deserves, he’s not the one they need right now.

The movie ends with the city in disarray and with Alfred burning the letter Rachel wrote to Bruce telling him of her intentions to marry Harvey. Sometimes it’s best to let people believe what they want to believe. The audience doesn’t get off so easy.

Christopher Nolan gives us a masterful crime-drama in the vein of The French Connection or Heat yet stays completely true to the comic book format and the specific rules of this character. It comes without many of the bells and whistles (no Harley Quinn, no Robin, the gadgets stay fairly grounded) but it represents a great artist’s take on an icon. Gritty, real, heartfelt and topical. He involves the entire city (Chicago looks great on screen) in the movie as The Dark Knight’s themes are much more public than the very private Batman Begins. The scope is enormous but the structure bears the weight of the film; this is one movie that will haunt the viewer for days and stand up beautifully to reviewing. It’s better than any Batman movie before it and better than most movies in general.

Too much is put on the word dark by many fanboys and girls looking towards adaptations. They want a DARK Where the Wild Things Are, DARK comic book movies, DARK anything that could in anyway be associated with childhood. What they should ask for is a respectful adaptation, not a “dark” one. And while this movie happens to be dark, in its crisp photography by Wally Pfister and its adult take on funny book morality, this is filled with a light of creativity. The story telling is intense and can be tiring, (the movie is almost as long as this review at a full 2:30) but it feels like an overstuffed sack of top-notch entertainment.

Now there’s been a lot of talk of Heath Ledger garnering a posthumous Oscar-nomination for his role here, and I’m no party pooper. He’s brilliant in a role that has been played brilliantly, but differently, before. But I submit that the The Dark Knight needs an Acadamy Award nomination for Best Picture. It would send a message from the film community that would dovetail perfectly with the message this movie sends. People don’t have to abandon their principles to make something palatable for the masses. A truly great movie can appeal to a wide range of people and touch them all in a specific way.

The Dark Knight is haunting in the same way No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood were, but it doesn’t come at the cost of a low box office. Great movies can make money as they once did, or they do when Pixar’s name comes up before the title. And this is a great movie, one that will certainly make a lot of money.