The Dark Knight (2008): 10 out of 10: Batman (Christian Bale), Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) are making progress against Gotham City’s organized crime problem. Unfortunately, squeezing the mob creates an opening for the Joker (Heath Ledger), a criminal whose interests extend considerably beyond making money. As his attacks escalate, Gotham’s protectors discover that saving the city may require choices their respective job descriptions did not adequately explain.
The Good
The Good: There is a particular problem with reviewing an excellent movie. Give me a disaster and I can spend a thousand words explaining how the screenplay apparently escaped through an unattended window. Give me Goodfellas, RoboCop, or The Maltese Falcon, and suddenly I am reduced to pointing at the television and making approving noises. Great movie. Go watch it. Apparently, we still have some space to fill.
The Dark Knight is that kind of excellent.
Let us start with the screenplay, because beneath the makeup, motorcycles, and considerable property damage is an extraordinarily well-constructed film. There are enough plot threads here to supply several lesser superhero movies, yet they build upon one another with remarkable confidence.
The campaign against organized crime, Gotham’s political future, Bruce Wayne’s hopes for a life beyond Batman, and the Joker’s increasingly elaborate provocations all belong to the same story. Developments have consequences. Conversations establish ideas that later scenes put under pressure. Supporting characters have something to contribute beyond explaining the next collectible object.
It is an intelligent film that trusts the audience to keep up. What a refreshing concept. It also earns its running time. I complain about long movies regularly enough that I should probably have stationery, but, like The Godfather, this one has sufficient story to justify the commitment. Plenty of superhero films run two and a half hours. This one actually brings two and a half hours’ worth of movie.
Consider the opening bank robbery. In another film, this would be the sequence everyone remembered. Here, it establishes the tone, introduces our problem, and leaves room for a succession of scenes that could each be another movie’s highlight. The Joker’s pencil trick alone announces a villain who can make a room uncomfortable before its occupants have quite worked out what they are dealing with.
Then we take a trip to Hong Kong, where Batman briefly wanders into a Metal Gear Solid mission by way of Mission: Impossible. The extraction sequence is a beautifully executed adventure within the larger film. There is planning, suspense, gadgetry, and a wonderfully ridiculous aerial exit. It also gives the movie a welcome change of scenery.
Meanwhile, Alfred gets a yacht full of ballerinas. Michael Caine looks so thoroughly comfortable aboard that boat that I started having Jaws: The Revenge flashbacks. Some actors need extensive preparation to inhabit a role. Caine appears to have found his motivation somewhere near the sun loungers.
The action benefits enormously from its physicality. Vehicles have weight. Stunts feel dangerous. Things collide with other things in a manner that suggests someone had a difficult conversation with an insurance company. Nolan supplies spectacle without making the entire climax a prolonged argument between computer-generated light sources.
Even Iron Man, another very good superhero movie from 2008, eventually arrives at the obligatory large armored gentlemen hitting each other. Batman’s particular skill set helps avoid that problem, but so does having a director who understands that escalation requires more than a larger explosion.
The performances are excellent across the board. Bale gives the film an effective center; Oldman makes Gordon’s decency feel like hard work, and Eckhart makes Harvey Dent someone worth investing in. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman provide the sort of effortless authority that allows a movie about an extravagantly equipped bat enthusiast to maintain a straight face.
And then there is Ledger. His Joker is funny, repellent, theatrical, and deeply unsettling, sometimes within the same sentence. The performance makes simply listening to someone talk feel dangerous. You watch the other characters trying to assess him, locate an incentive, or establish some usable boundaries. Good luck with any of that.
His contradictory explanations for his scars are particularly effective. One account involves his father. Another involves his wife. These cannot both be the reliable origin story we instinctively expect a movie to provide. The film is teaching us something about the man telling them: his explanations are part of the performance.
Trying to establish a tidy, consistent psychology for this fellow is like trying to interpret one of the Scarecrow’s dreams. His Oscar was well deserved.
The dialogue is also remarkably quotable. “Why so serious?” became ubiquitous for a reason, while Alfred’s observation that “some men just want to watch the world burn” provides an exceptionally economical description of the problem. The screenplay has memorable lines because the characters have memorable things to say.
The Bad
The Bad: I have a couple of niggles. We remain firmly in ten-out-of-ten territory, but I cannot just spend the entire review applauding. People will talk.
First, I do not particularly like Chicago as Gotham. It is too clean. There is too much daylight. There are too many buildings that look as though their maintenance requests are being answered.
Gotham should feel a little more diseased. In my mental geography, Manhattan gets to be Metropolis, while Gotham draws from the Lower East Side, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and the grittier stretches across the river in New Jersey. There should be an impression that the city was already having problems before anyone started dressing for them.
This is something Robert Pattinson’s The Batman understands very well. I genuinely enjoyed that film, although it was a little loud, a little dark, and a little long. Rewatching The Dark Knight did make me wonder whether I had been slightly generous with it. A very good Batman movie faces an unfortunate comparison when this one exists.
Second, the Joker’s schemes occasionally require a generous acceptance of timing, preparation, and everyone else doing precisely what the screenplay needs. His inconsistent stories explain why we should distrust him; they do not necessarily explain how he gets everything organized. (“Do I look like someone with a plan?”)
Nevertheless, the film moves so confidently, and the character is such a deliberate assault on rational expectations, that I find little pleasure in stopping it to audit his calendar.
The late sequence involving two ferries is also among the weaker stretches. Its moral argument is more visibly arranged than the conflicts elsewhere in the film, and it slows some of the momentum. It works well enough, but in a movie this consistently compelling, “well enough” becomes noticeable.
The Ugly
The Ugly: What on earth happened with The Dark Knight Rises?
I will give that film its own review, eventually. It has moments. Unfortunately, it also had me yelling at the screen the first time I watched it, and we are talking Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull yelling. Nobody in the room was mistaking it for enthusiasm.
What makes the sequel particularly frustrating is the screenplay sitting right here. The Dark Knight balances its characters, themes, and complications with such assurance that the next film feels as though somebody misplaced the instructions.
Fortunately, this movie works beautifully on its own. Batman Begins is a good film, but it is not The Dark Knight good. The sequel is a discussion for another day, preferably after I have put away the breakables. Despite occupying the middle of a trilogy, this feels like a complete dramatic experience. You can watch it, appreciate it, and stop there quite happily.
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: The Dark Knight is an exceptionally intelligent, entertaining film with superb action, excellent performances, memorable dialogue, and a screenplay that gives its considerable ambition a solid foundation. It understands how to build tension, how to develop competing ideas through its characters, and how to deliver an extraordinary sequence without acting as though the rest of the movie can take the afternoon off.
Yes, I would like a grimier Gotham. Yes, the ferries are a slight dip. Neither complaint makes much of a dent in what Christopher Nolan accomplishes here.
There are films you recommend with qualifications. You will enjoy it if you like the genre. You need to forgive the opening hour. The effects are dated, but stick with it. The Dark Knight requires no such negotiation. Great movie. Go watch it.
