Review of The Dark Knight

By Greg Oguss

You get famous enough and you face a choice. “Either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain.” That’s a piece of advice the Caped Crusader offers to himself near the end of The Dark Knight. He could easily be talking about the recently deceased Heath Ledger, who turned in a stylish performance as the Joker before making the easy choice in early 2008, checking out by turning himself into a walking pharmacy due to the pressures of fame. Ledger’s performance is what most reviewers have written about ad nauseam. Waxing especially moronic, one online critic claimed she was so bummed by her belief that Ledger’s death was likely caused by the darkness which his role forced him to confront that she was going to boycott the film. Here’s a newsflash for that airhead, Ledger was a heavily self-medicated unstable insomniac headed for a crash long before a heavy-handed, overlong script for a Christopher Nolan action pic entered his life.

Ledger’s performance is effective in a sort of Christian Slater does Nicholson with some gay camp icon whose name I can’t recall thrown in for good measure. The gay element puts Ledger’s distinctive stamp on the Joker character. It also recalls the LA Times’ remark that his performance in Brokeback
Mountain was “an apparent gay spoof.” That comment was a tit-for-tat remark after Ledger giggled when presenting an award for Brokeback Mountain at the SAG Awards in 2005. To keep it real, Ledger was a pretty boy who, given the right role, could pull off a charismatic performance. But to read the sort of necrophile-ish praise he’s been receiving for the Joker is more stomach-turning than to hear about another young star joining the 27 Club, even one who was 28 when he died.

I could give a fuck if Ledger wins a posthumous Oscar. I’m still broken up about those other deserving actors posthumously nominated who lost out. I was crushed back in 1995 when, in a shocking turned of events, the Academy overlooked Donald Pleasence in Halloween 5: The Curse of Michael Myers and went with Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects for Best Supporting Actor. And who can forget the 2004 Emmys, when John Ritter, posthumously nominated for 8 Simple Rules, lost to Jim Belushi of According to Jim. I can’t, that’s who.

In all seriousness, Nolan did a fantastic job with Batman Begins, reviving a franchise that most fans thought Joel Schumacher had buried forever under a high-camp sensibility that was “so bad, it’s good.” Only, unlike Showgirls, it wasn’t.  The appeal of Batman Begins was its efficient script, the presence of Christian Bale, and the hi-tech gadgetry which gave Tim Burton’s
Gotham a distinctly 21^st century feel. But it was also due to its fab origin story. The transformation of the cowardly Bruce Wayne into the vigilante outlaw Batman provided the emotional charge of Batman Begins. Despite that film’s two and a half hour length, it was compulsive viewing. The movie also turned “origin story” into a buzzword that’s been parodied on the Colbert Report.

The only thing compelling in the repetitive and overlong Dark Night is the fact that a dead guy is playing the villain. Like Ledger, the rest of the cast is solid.  The dependable Eric Roberts is spot-on as a sleazy mob boss, sounding as though he could have wandered out of a Sopranos episode while entertaining some bimbo in a club as she strains to make herself heard. Amused, he tells her, “You think I wanna hear what you’re fuckin’ sayin?” Aaron Eckhart is the crusading white knight DA Harvey Dent turned vengeful villain, Two-Face. To suggest that Ledger steals the film, as many will, is to ignore how effective Eckhart is in his crucial role. The only weak link in the cast is Maggie

stepping into Katie Holmes’s role of do-gooder lawyer Rachel Spencer. Gyllenhaal is essentially doing a Holmes impersonation and it doesn’t come off. The banter between Bale’s Wayne and Michael Caine’s faithful servant Alfred is as entertaining as in Batman Begins.  When
Wayne faces the impossible choice of having to reveal his identity and give himself up to stop the Joker’s murderous rampage, Alfred jokes that he supposes he’ll be heading to jail as Batman’s “accomplice.”
Wayne dryly remarks, “Accomplice? I plan on telling them the whole thing was your idea.” There is a lot for any fan of action flix to enjoy in the movie, there’s just too much of it. The film pacing is a result of a tendency to make its points via its ponderous dialogue. Rather than visually dramatizing the parallels between its two freaks, Batman and the Joker, Nolan’s script contains windy speeches in which characters explain how alike Batman and the Joker are. There are also heavy-handed speeches about how people are basically good and regarding the need to stand up to “terrorists” like the Joker. Okay, now I’m starting to agree with that airhead reviewer who thinks the role probably made Heath kill himself. They had him playing Bin Laden for fuck’s sake. Hell, that’d make me reach for a couple bottles of Ambien with a Klonopin chaser, too.

The Dark Night is fairly weighty for a summer action flick compared to the light and breezy Iron Man, which scored political points off some juicy targets without pausing. The “costs of fame” in The Dark Knight drive Batman underground by the end of the film, hunted by dogs who have been  terrorizing him throughout the course of the movie. A parallel could be drawn between this plot twist and the rabid paparazzi who hounded Heath Ledger until his death. That’s an unintentional commentary in another mindless summer blockbuster which will earn a few extra dollars due to Ledger’s premature death. RIP Pretty Boy.

To read more of Greg, go to www.slurvemag.com

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