the Dark Knight - 10/10
They are echoing across cyberspace, with only scant voices on the contrary. The Dark Night is the one that we can pretty much all agree on. It's a gritty crime epic that finally feels a worthy cinematic substitute for all those great Batman stories told in the comics. You can put this one alongside The Long Halloween and it won't feel out of place, just as you can put it alongside a film like The Untouchables and still have it make sense. it works as a comic book, no doubt, but it also works as a study on crime, vengeance, and just how horrifyingly senseless the world can be when one or several people decide to up the ante. it's idealistic and bleak all at once.
Christopher Nolan's sequel to 2005's Batman Begins is blistering on both the literal and the figural levels. People die in horrible, sometimes heartbreaking ways. we watch loved ones get blown to earth and ash. The villains may have the plans temporarily thwarted, but in the end they win because they survive through the inspiration they ignite in the most desperate of us. Where Batman (played again by Christian Bale, no doubt the most perfect Batman of any of the films) wants to strike fear into the criminals but inspire hope in the desperate and the frightened citizens of Gotham, the Joker (Heath Ledger, who doesn't so much play the role as he does inhabit the role) wants to spread chaos all across the boards. he doesn't want the criminals to take their town back from the newly inspired masses, he wants everyone to tear everyone else apart, not so he can rebuild society...not so he can have it for himself...but because he thinks it's funny. because he wants to prove a point, that at our most base, at our most trying of times...there is no point. we will go lunatic, then we'll all be damned. the Joker wants to bring everyone down to his level. Batman goes down to that level so everyone else can rise above.
SPOILERS AHEAD, YA NERDS:
For all the talk of Heath Ledger's Joker (which was masterful), i found the primary image that stayed with me as i walked out of the theater was Harvey Dent/Two-Face (Aaron Eckhart in his best role to date). As Dent, he tough but caring, hopeful but realistic. The Un-Caped Crusader. He comes close to the edge, but is able to talk himself/be talked out of it. When he becomes Two-Face (his origins altered from the comic, but no less heartbreaking or harrowing), he is the death's head of vengeance. THIS is the Two-Face we've been waiting for. no hot pink make-up or neon purple suits with tiger stripes. No gimmicks (save for his trademark double-headed coin and the split suit), just the most tragic of all of Batman's rogues. the one he feels responsible for the most. A great man, the one hope for the city, half-flayed into a brutal madman. And about the make-up; it's amazing. it looks like a real burn while still fantastical enough to remind everyone of the comic.
Summation; it was a perfect Batman film. everyone had their day, you don't get shortchanged or oversold. even the scene where the Joker wears a nurses uniform, which by any other actor in any other movie, would have been a ticket to act all femme and silly, doesn't go south. It's almost as if the Joker just said "oh i need a disguise..well this will do" and dons the nurses uniform without changing his mannerisms or altering the cadence of his voice. it's just another pair of clothes for him. and side note about the scene in question...when he sits at Two-Faces bed and says "Hiiiii" with "tsssss...sorry" tone and look, that may have been the funniest moment in all Batman films. it's hard to put it in words. if you've seen the movie you know what i'm talking about. if you haven't...well just what in the hell is wrong with you?
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