Wow.
I don’t like comic books. I don’t usually like comic book movies. I liked the original Superman: The Movie from the seventies, and I thought the recent Spiderman movie was just obnoxious.
But The Dark Knight was great. Heath Ledger had been making great buzz as The Joker, and all the talk about Oscar-worthiness got me interested in seeing it, and I was not disappointed. At all. In fact, I was pretty damn impressed.
I like dark movies, and this one was pretty dark - particularly for a comic book movie. This is NOT the Adam West/Cesar Romero Batman and Joker from the TV series, or even the Michael Keaton/Jack Nicholson Batman and Joker from Tim Burton’s go at it. This one doesn’t attempt to be fun, it goes for serious - and paradoxically, therein lies the fun. The Joker doesn’t make over the top corny, campy jokes - any humor that comes from the Joker comes from his being sarcastic. He’s more disturbing (and disturbed) than funny. He’s a genuinely threatening villain.
And our hero is forced to examine his own ethics when confronted by the Joker’s complete lack of them. How far can you go and what means can you use to defeat evil without becoming evil yourself? Pertinent question for our times (viz., waterboarding).
The rest of the cast is great too. Aaron Eckhart’s character did not develop as I expected at all - I love being surprised by movies - and I even liked Maggie Gyllenhaal who I normally don’t really care for. Each actor was fully vested in their characters, and this was a true ensemble piece.
Four stars.
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