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)