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The Dark Knight review: Gutted

Only read p1 and p7, so peeps may have said everything here. But...

Too long
Too many plot threads getting subsumed/lost
Not a Batman (the character) I recognised (I felt this realls strongly in his 1st scene)
Too many deaths - they strain the plot
And far too fucking violent for a 12A :eek:

GS(v)
 
Wookey said:
I watched The Dark Knight last night on an imax screen after months and months of patient waiting and gleeful anticipation. Sadly, I have to report that claims of brilliance, legendary magnificence and stupendous fabulousness are (as surely we all knew they would be?) greatly exaggerated.

The film is two and a half hours long, but feels like three. We actually thought it was three as we came blinking out of the cinema rubbing our numb arses. It has the plot of three movies squeezed into one film, and for a large part of it I was confused as to what exactly was going on, and where the story was going (not in a 'Oooh, what a nice surprise!' way, but in a 'What a jumbled mess!' way.

First things first; Heath Ledger is good. He's not 'brilliant', 'earth-shattering' or 'Oscar-potential' - but then, this is a Batman movie remember, he was never going to be those things. But in the stage he's given, with the script he's given, the boy did well. His performance is arresting, delicious and noteable. In fact, if it wasn't for him I would be putting this film down as a stinker.

Christian Bale is alright, he has a silly raspy voice that grated after...oooh, about three words. His performance never really touches the emotional depths of Batman Begins, and yes, I'm aware of how that sounds as I'm typing it, but it's true.

The love interest Rachel is dowdy and plain looking, which makes a mockery of the line the Joker speaks when he says: 'And yes, you are BEAUTIFUL!' when she clearly is nothing of the sort (unless Gotham just has very low standards).

The stunts are OK, nothing earth shattering. The special effects are good, the sometime hero Harvey Dent (Twoface, in one of the extra plotlines that wasn't needed) has a great face burn job that looks realistic even though it must be CGI.

Gary Oldman is alright. Everyone is alright, it's just that the plot is pony, there was not a single laugh in there for me (I actually groaned instead of laughed) and the script is dreadful. Really, quite dreadful.

The worst thing is the direction, there are large parts which are confused, especially some fight scenes and car chases. You could have lost an hour of the film and it would have worked better. One theme appears to be the Joker's anarchic nature, he claims to be 'chaos, which can only ever be fair' - and yet he his finely honed and executed schemes are far from chaotic, and this inaccuracy grated on me.

There is one spectacular scene when the Joker, dressed as some lunatic nurse, blows up a hospital, and walks away clapping and walking a stiff-limbed walk like a mad doll. Those few seconds, where the baddie looked like a real madman, and the explosions ripped across the screen, and the humour came to the surface and was real instead of forced, that moment felt like a proper Batman movie. If they had repeated that for three hours, it would have been a far better film.

Another highlight is the 'social experiment' laid by the Joker, with two ferries loaded with explosives. One ferry is full of crooks, the other full of regular people - and each group is given a detonator, with the knowledge that they can each blow up the other boat and save themselves, or neither blow up a boat and risk being blown up at midnight by the Joker anyway. That scene resolves very nicely - but it's all rather rushed, and confused, and under-exploited. Much like the whole film, the good bits fly by, and the bad bits stand out like sore thumbs.

In all, I would urge you to go and see this purely because Heath Ledger's final performance deserves to be seen. That said, I feel quite resentful that the marketing department for Batman have clearly exploited Heath's death and cranked this movie up into the event of the decade, using the promise of a career-statement performance that his was never going to be. We can only ultimately be let down when the promise doesn't come true. There is no Joker soliloquy, no scene in which he steals your breath and which could be forever repeated as evidence of his incredible potential. The most that can be said, perhaps, is that Heath was great enough to mask the flaws of a messy movie - not a skill to be overlooked, but not the work of a legend either.

Finally, this is not the finely crafted review I would normally write (what Wookey, you put effort into this shit?!) but just my first thoughts on waking up this morning. I actually am so disappointed with Dark Knight that I don't feel like crafting a smart-arse review at all, I have better things to do. Like plan what I'm going to wear for Watchmen.;)
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I saw this tonight. Earlier, I'd said that my kids had liked it, so what does Wookey know? What I didn't know, was that my kids are actually media droids who like what they're told to like.:( I guess they're allowed, what with being kids and all.

I'd agree with most of wookey's analysis. Ledger was passable, but how hard is it to play a crazy guy? All you have to do is make weird faces and have a funny walk. You've got makeup on, so it's not like we're able to detect subtleties of emotion. I think of earlier baddies, movie and tv: Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, Jack Nicholson. All were convincing crazies, and so is Ledger.

Where did they get the chick? The city's greatest heroes are duelling over this girl? Who did the casting?

If you're going to do an action movie, at least make it so we can see the action. There is too much fast, cut-away editing, things become confusing, unless it's a high speed drive under the tracks of the L train, which bale does in at least three vehicles that I can immediately recall. In and out of the picket-cars. There's at least one good sequence, though, where the semi does a nose stand.

And all the comic book philosophising. By the end, when Gordon is delivering his batman soliloquy, I wanted to be able to type 'STFU', somewhere, in big letters with an exclamation mark.

I think part of it is, I'm tired of comic books made into movies. I'm tired of two dimensional characters and a plot that goes like this: Batman fights the Joker. Even something like the Bourne movies give us lots of action, but make us at least care a little about the characters.

I liked the last batman better. Seemed there was more characterization, as I recall, but I can't really recall, because all of these movies are ultimately forgettable.

When you get right down to it, I think I'd disagree with wookey on one point: I would call this movie a stinker.

The popcorn was good, though. Properly buttered, not too much or too little, layered.
 
i think you and wookey are in a very small minority , even el jeffe enjoyed it , still its nice to be different innit ;)
 
Johnny Canuck2 said:
Ledger was passable, but how hard is it to play a crazy guy?
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A lot harder than you'd think IMO. Certainly to do it convincingly and to give a solid and serious performance, rather than somone smiling like a chimp and being an fool for the sake of it.

Ledger's performance was superb.
 
I'm sure that Jim Carrey would have played it just as well. Or Robin Williams. Or why not Lenny Henry, he's a joker all right!
 
Johnny Canuck2 said:
Not crazy/funny. Crazy/crazy.

Think Jack Nicholson.
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With all due respect, Ledger acted Nicholson off the (respective) screen. Everyone held up Nicholson's Joker as 'the' Joker, but he was just playing Jack - Ledger (and the Nolans, of course) created a much more interesting character and played it with more subtlety, if that's possible with such a character.
 
Lord Camomile said:
With all due respect, Ledger acted Nicholson off the (respective) screen. Everyone held up Nicholson's Joker as 'the' Joker, but he was just playing Jack - Ledger (and the Nolans, of course) created a much more interesting character and played it with more subtlety, if that's possible with such a character.
Click to expand...

I wasn't comparing performances. I was responding to the comment that Jim Carrey could do the role.

I was pointing out that it's not a comic role.
 
Johnny Canuck2 said:
I wasn't comparing performances. I was responding to the comment that Jim Carrey could do the role.

I was pointing out that it's not a comic role.
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Fair enough (besides, Carrey is already the Riddler :p ;)), though I'd still argue Nicholson was playing it more for laughs than Ledger; certainly more 'fun'.
 
Lord Camomile said:
Fair enough (besides, Carrey is already the Riddler :p ;)), though I'd still argue Nicholson was playing it more for laughs than Ledger; certainly more 'fun'.
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As I recall, Nicholson plays it possibly a little closer to what the character was originally intended to be, which is imo, a psychotic clown. And even a psychotic clown can get off a few good lines that might get a laugh.

The only thing clownish about Ledger's rendition, is the makeup, barely.
 
I thought it was alright. It didn't live up to the hype, but to be fair, it'd have to provide a cure for fucking cancer to do that. The plot was somewhat confused and all that "terrorist" shit grated on my last nerve, but it was still an enjoyable (if flawed) superhero film with a strong performance from Ledger.
 
Johnny Canuck2 said:
As I recall, Nicholson plays it possibly a little closer to what the character was originally intended to be, which is imo, a psychotic clown. And even a psychotic clown can get off a few good lines that might get a laugh.

The only thing clownish about Ledger's rendition, is the makeup, barely.
Click to expand...
Nicholson's Joker is the clown price of crime of the old TV series, Ledger's Joker is the irredeemable psychopath of the darker, late 80s and early 90s comics.

It's not really fair to compare the two, because they're not even really playing the same character. That said, I thought that pencil bit was hillarious.
 
Not to me. Proved what?

Okay, so I'll change my opinion based on the general consensus, homogeny is good. :rolleyes: :D

Hey... I laughed, four times.
 
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