I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight at the local AMC mutiplex in downtown Phoenix, and while I can't say I was disappointed (because I wasn't), there were a few criticisms. As is my habit, I waited till the hype had died down, and viewed the film with a few family in the comfort of a spacious and empty theatre, soft pretzel pieces popping into my head.
Without going into an entire review, I should say that Christopher Nolan managed to continue the positive trend in creating a dark, questioning, semi-realistic Batman. There are some, like New Yorker critic David Denby, who seem to want a lighter, brighter, funnier (doofier?) film, closer to what Tim Burton created those many years ago when Batman leaped from comic to big screen. But such a complaint is ridiculous in light of the comic nonsense that nearly killed the franchise. Nolan raised the seemingly dead, and in serious fashion, and for that, many hosanas.
However Denby is not entirely wrong in knocking the pacing and structure of the film, and most of my complaints center around plot and casting.
There was a point in the film, around two thirds of the way in, where the Joker has been taken into custody, and the people guarding him and others proceed to do everything that semi-intelligent people in their right minds would not do. That would include leaving one officer as a lone watchman inside the room with the Joker, and, (as the guard) allowing oneself to be taunted into a confrontation with the Joker without adequate backup. In the flurry of action and distraction, and with the Joker as the central culprit, it just defied rationality that he should be left alone in such a situation, and despite whatever diversions he created to lure away the supposedly wiser and more capable hands.
Often I found myself thinking, "Why doesn't someone just shoot him," the Joker lacking any specific superpowers, and perhaps that is just a thought that can be easier made from observation than if you were a character in the film actually having to pull a trigger or face murder charges. But I think you could argue that killing a man who is himself in the middle of killing others makes it quite justifiable, thought the film clearly suggests Batman wont't go there.
I also found the chase scenes wildly ridiculous and they managed to undercut the realism that has made the Nolan movies such a joy. I suppose there is a type of viewer that needs the car chases and wants to see the latest version of the Batmobile in action, but it could still be done in a way that does not distort the logic of city streets. Invariably the action in the film would have created a level of damage unsustainable by any functioning city. Take that nonsense out to the suburbs and keep the action in the city proportional to what is possible, or have the recklessness culminate in one quick and destructive explosion.
The level of absurdity in the physical action did not help the frantic plot; had the chases been contained, the plot could have rolled out in more coherent fashion: less Batman on Batcycle, more explanation of how both Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent could find assistant District Attorney Rachel Dawes even remotely fascinating.
And what is that? Why do we not have one appropitately talented but also interesting actress in that role? In Batman Begins we suffered through wooden and quite ordinary looking Katie Holmes, only to have her replaced with a more talented, but quite ordinary Maggie Gyllenhaal. It's not just a matter of having a pleasant or attractive face. It's creating a female character that men, and smart men, should be willing to die or be really stupid over. Thus I found myself wanting to assure the demented Dent, "Dude, a little plastic surgery and you will get someone much more beautiful." Or not even beautiful... someone more interesting. Maybe a Lili Taylor or someone that can add depth and emotion. If a woman does not stun you with looks, you look for what makes them interesting, or, if a woman is not interesting, you notice her looks, but lacking neither, the death of Rachel Dawes was not much of a plot turn for me.
My biggest problem with the movie was how the black characters were used. Often I don't like to go "there" because it makes people uncomfortable and nothing ruins a great film more than having to bring real world issues into how you perceive it. But this issue has crossed my mind ever since seeing the entertaining film Spartan warrior film 300, where all the dark skinned characters were wiped out and void of any authentic menace beyond the darkness of skin.
I hardly imagined that I would be sitting in a Batman film watching Heath Ledger's truly amazing Joker pound the head of a black thug down onto the point of a pencil, or forcing the two remaining black thugs to fight each other to the death. It got to the point where if you saw a black face, and it wasn't the ever gentle Morgan Freeman, you just knew the guy was dead. Two black thugs-dead. Commissioner Black Guy (Loeb)-dead. There was another who I can't place-still dead.
In fact all the ethnic people, hispanic, Asian, black, were either corrupt, convicts or, eventually, dead. Why? Why does the Eric Robert's Italian gangster fellow maintain his dignity, while the black thugs, and blacks in general in movies, seem to be all talk and easily subdued? Is that someone's fantasy, and one that defies all logic of who actually does a lot of the killing and thuggery in real life? (A point I should hardly be proud of, but in the same way Italians secretly like their mafia movies, I want to be able to sit through a film where my evil black guy is not thoroughly humiliated or a puff tart).
Ah, but what of Morgan Freeman and the convict, who are both men of principle, with Morgan deeply disturbed at spying on innocents and the convict unwilling to blow up a boat of others before he and those on his boat are blown away? Good black people, no? Are you not appeased, black movie watcher?
But that's troubling as well. We are still getting the movies that depict blacks as impossibly wise or moral, even gentle, willing to drive around old white ladies. Also, we get the films where the black character is bad, but more talk than actually a real threat, and where there is always a white character to set him in his place, lead him, or out-bad him.
For a film like Batman it was possible to avoid killing so many black characters and still maintain the coherence of the plot. Heck, and speaking totally NOT for black actors, it is better to see no blacks humiliated on screen, than to see another black person with a job creating subtlely humiliating imagery. It's scenes like the Joker's killing of the black thug that puts comforting thoughts in minds not able to properly process that imagery and leave it on screen.
However these complaints with the film are small, and I imagine eventually the Hollywood establishment will become less oblivious to their own creations. As for Nolan, I think it was a job well done, for the second time in a row. The hype created around the film and centered on Heath Ledger's performance had me ready to deny any credit to that deceased actor, but the praise heaped upon him was well deserved. It is hard to walk away from the film without flashes of Ledger's Joker passing through the mind, and it is somewhat disturbing to find myself thinking, "I want to be him."
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