Daily Archives: July 17, 2008

The Dark Knight

Film Reviews

Expanding on the darker moods and true-crime instincts of 2005’s Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight cleverly balances its action with an exploration of optimism and decency’s combined power and potential fallibility in a world gone mad, and thus stands poised to leave a substantial summer footprint, both commercially and critically. While anticipation of the late Heath Ledger’s tongue-wagging, lip-smacking turn as the villainous Joker will draw in some new interest, it’s the novelistic density and moral complexity on display here that will drive repeat viewings and help The Dark Knight outstrip its predecessor’s $205 million domestic tally.



Picking up within a year of the events in Batman Begins, the film finds Batman (Christian Bale) and his police department counterpart and ally, Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), having some success in stemming the tide of crime in Gotham City. As the bold, hard-driving new district attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), works to dismantle the all-powerful criminal syndicates that have long had a stranglehold on the city, Batman and Gordon must determine whether or not they can trust the charismatic idealist.

Proceeding with caution, their partnership proves effective, especially after Batman trips to Hong Kong to make a dazzling extrication of businessman Lau (Chin Han), the accountant to all the criminal sects. Dent ties all the crime bosses together in a 2,500-count conspiracy indictment, and Batman, in the form of billionaire daytime alter ego Bruce Wayne, throws his support behind the district attorney with a dazzling fundraiser, convinced that Dent is the new public face of decency and order. The Joker, though, has other plans, unleashing a reign of terror built on shifting motivations. At first he offers to kill Batman for the city’s crime bosses; later he threatens serial deaths until Batman reveals his true identity. In the end, of course, it’s all a guise for his own games of anarchic indulgence.

Scripted by Nolan and his brother, Jonathan, from a story devised with David Goyer, a co-writer on Batman Begins, The Dark Knight may be the first movie of its kind, or at least the most persistent, to substantively, intellectually address the mythos of classic comic book action in something vaguely resembling the real world. There is a lot of discussion about, and actual action driven by, the symbolic value of Batman, and the limits of what he can accomplish versus the publicly empowered Dent.

In fact, it’s the depth of the latter storyline, of the tragically doomed district attorney, that is perhaps the most surprisingly effective part of the film, thematically speaking. His soul-of-the-city struggle parallels Batman’s quest, and has important implications when vigilantism and law-bending later creeps into play, in an effort to defeat the Joker. The film’s quibbling weak point is that a shift involving Dent’s personality, after he is wounded, is handled in mad-dash fashion, undercutting the sensitivity and care of all this set-up.

Nolan shows a much more refined hand with action here than he did in the first film, though these movies will never compete with the whiz-bang, state-of-the-art thrills of something like the Matrix films, or Wanted. There’s an emphasis on functionality over showsmanship with respect to the action scenes, and Nolan doesn’t pad these sequences with the sort of affected angles, stuffed shots or orgiastic CGI found in something like Transformers.

Bale delivers another solid, brooding performance as Wayne/Batman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal is a definite upgrade over Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes, the childhood crush of Bruce Wayne, now romantically involved with Dent. Finally, while there is undeniably a bit of a pall cast over the proceedings by the tragic passing of Ledger, it doesn’t last long, so starkly defined is his portrayal. There’s no cackling buffoonery here, just a grimness to match the material.

Other technical credits are superb across the board. The editing is slickly effective, crosscutting storylines and more clearly delineating the action than in Batman Begins. Also, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard’s score for the film again eschews hammy signature tones, instead trading in moods and rhythms; most striking is the theme for the Joker, a processed string arrangement which evokes dread in much the same manner as Jonny Greenwood’s lauded score for There Will Be Blood. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Warner Bros., PG-13, 152 minutes)

Step Up 2 the Streets

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

In August of 2006, Step Up, the
$12 million directorial debut of choreographer turned helmer Anne Fletcher (27 Dresses), used a
deft, direct-appeal marketing campaign that included a MySpace.com
contest which let users submit their own dance videos to ring up a
surprising $20.6 opening weekend, part of a $114 million worldwide
gross that included $65 million in domestic receipts. A fresh slate of young performers
combined with energetically staged and photographed sequences that
convey the cathartic joy of dance easily outweigh some of the more
predictable rhythms of formulaic storytelling in Step Up 2 the
Streets, a fun, flirty and engaging teen drama and stand-alone
sequel that serves as the latest entry in a line of pan-ethnic dance
films pitched chiefly at teens and big-city twentysomethings.

Delivering a gender inversion of the
same loose, wrong-side-of-the-tracks narrative of the first film, Step Up 2 the Streets‘
story centers on rebellious, teenage street dancer Andie (Briana
Evigan, above right), a Baltimore-bred orphan on the brink of being sent by her
deceased mother’s friend to live with her aunt in Texas — a fate
akin to permanent exile. Given the opportunity of an audition at the
prestigious but achingly proper Maryland School of the Arts, the
street-wise Andie improbably wins a spot. Her unique talent, as well
as her attractiveness, catches the attention of the school’s hottest
dancer and reigning big man on campus, Chase (Robert Hoffman, above left), whose
older brother Blake (Will Kemp), a legendary ballet performer in his
own right, has returned to lead the school and oversee its artistic
re-shaping. Andie is caught up between two worlds, and the different
rules and expectations that go with each. So when her old friends
abandon her, she joins forces with Chase and a new posse of classmate
outcasts and unconventional types to form a crew to compete in
Baltimore’s big underground dance battle, The Streets.

One of the movie’s great successes is
the sense of scale apportioned its conflicts. Like, interestingly enough, Curtis Hanson’s 8
Mile, Step Up 2 the Streets assays urban tension
and class/race conflict without needlessly getting into gunplay and
all the distasteful and/or stereotypically overwrought chest-thumping
that often stems from that. Just as that former film — a slightly
re-contextualized biopic about rapper Eminem’s rise from gritty
Detroit — featured fisticuffs and a scene with paintball guns which
served to define the ceiling of acceptable violence within the
characters’ world, so too does Step Up 2 the Streets. When
Chase and Andie’s new crew crosses her old gang with a prank they
post on the Internet, retribution takes the form of vandalism, a
“simple” but brief assault by fist and, inevitably,
feverish dancing competition, all in equal measure. This careful
modulation lends credence to the notion of dance as an expression of
(adolescent, not just underclass) frustration, an important
underpinning of the story.

Step Up 2 the Streets is the
feature directorial debut of USC Film School graduate Jon Chu, and he
locates the exuberance and thrill of personal expression in capturing
its dance sequences. If there’s a knock, it’s that several of these
dance-feud and performance set pieces — particularly a climactic
group showcase that moves from a crowded, warehouse-style dance club
outdoors, into the rain — come across as too tightly choreographed
to be truly improvised, and thus undercut some of the loose-limbed
energy present in other sequences.

A lot of the screenplay’s dialogue, by
writers Tori Ann Johnson and Karen Barna, is of the boilerplate
variety, but the cast evidences a warm rapport that masks much of its
awkwardness. Both Evigan and Hoffman, in particular, make strong,
winning impressions. It certainly helps that Chu places an obvious
value on low-key, natural charm. By allowing the characters’
personalities to come forward a bit more incrementally than usual for
such teen-pitched product, one’s identification with their plights,
respective and shared, evolves more naturally.

Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, the special “Dance-Off” edition of Step Up 2 the Streets is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with French, Spanish and English Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks. Eight deleted scenes run a total of 21 minutes, and include introductions by Chu; the most notable addition here is an extended subplot involving an argument between Andie and Moose (Adam Sevani), who tries to protect her from Chase. A nice 12-minute-plus making-of featurette charts Chu’s first-day drive to the set, and includes interviews with his parents (!) and snippets from home movies he made as a kid; executive producer David Nicksay, meanwhile, talks up his Chu’s energy, and says he’s frequently out there mixing it up with the dancers. There’s also a five-minute featurette on the “410” dance crew that comprise some of the bit players and extras, as well as a number of music videos, including for Flo Rida and T-Pain’s smash hit “Low,” featured prominently in the movie. Most amusing, though, is a two-minute prank video in which Hoffman and some colleagues go into a convenience store, freeze in the middle of a purchase, and then start to dance, freaking out the befuddled clerk. B+ (Movie) B (Disc)