The View From Here

So, the weekend has finally come and gone and I have seen the movie I have been anticipating for a long while.  If all you read is the first couple lines of this blog post, know this, The Dark Knight delivers in a huge way.  Also know that it is a marathon of a movie.  What I mean by that is it is long (two and a half hours without previews), it is intense, it is dark, and it is awesome.

Let the record show that I really enjoy long movies when all the elements come together.  I really enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movies.  They were well done.  They were epic.  The acting was great.  The story was wonderful.  The writing was superb.  And the director knew what to do with these elements.   The same can be said of The Dark Knight in every instance.  And all of this from a superhero flick.  You expect the flash, bang, and boom of special effects but not a movie that I would consider one of the best I have seen.

Long movies also allow for deep character development.  With the origin story out of the way we can delve deeper into the Batman mythos.  We get to see Bruce Wayne/Batman deal with choosing the moral thing despite what people think of him.  We get to see the rise and fall of another Gotham hero.  We get to see more of Gordon’s character and interaction with Batman.  And, yes, we get to see a lot of the much-talked-about Joker.  And since the movie is a long one it gives the director (Christopher Nolan) time to allow us to get to know this place and these characters in a deeper way.

Speaking of characters, let me talk for a moment about the actors in this film.  I did not see a weak link in the casting.  Every major character really stepped up and made the role theirs.  Heath Ledger, the most talked about for sure, brought the Joker to the screen in a phenomenal way.  When you watched him, you saw the character and not the actor.  He was funny in a very demented way and is probably the best villain I can recall seeing in a movie.  His character didn’t seem to have a weakness (other than to assume that others were like him).  Christian Bale was solid again.  Gary Oldman was allowed more screen time which allowed him to flesh out Gordon even more.  Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman were both great and added a little (lighter) humor that the film needed.  Maggie Gyllenhaal was a great replacement for Katie Holmes.

Without good writing the actors would have had a much harder time pulling this movie off but that was not a problem.  The writing was superb.  I am hard pressed to think of a sequence that didn’t work because of the dialogue.  The story twists and turns and keeps the audience on their toes wondering what will come next.  Several story elements were even unexpected.  The story was not shallow.  There was depth, complexity, and imminent peril present constantly.

With all the good that can be said of this movie, like anything else, it’s not perfect.  If you a concerned about spoilers then don’t read this paragraph until after you have seen the movie.  The transformation of Harvey Dent into Two Face seemed a little rushed.  The events that led him to this transformation were tragic enough to push someone over the edge but it just happened too fast.  Even with that said, the Two Face character was a perfect mirror with his twisted sense of justice to the Harvey Dent character.  The only other issue I had was with a plot element.  Somehow, we end up with two ferries on the river, one with normal people and one with convicts which set up the climactic showdown.  How did this just happen?  These were supposed to be people trying to flee the Joker’s “game”.  It just seemed a bit contrived and scripted.  I think it could have been just as compelling if both ferries were filled with normal people.  I know, I am nitpicking here.  Both of these items are  small in comparison to the overall greatness of this movie.

The Dark Knight broke through many of the boundaries that usually typify movies from this genre.  It became something more than a superhero movie.  It was a fantastic movie worth all the hype it has received.  The Dark Knight delivers on it’s promise.  It’s the total package.  Need I say more?  Go see it.

Brian