Frank's Movie Log

Grade: A

Synopsis: After crippling Gotham City’s organized crime element, Batman (Christian Bale) encounters a new threat bent on ripping the city in two, the Joker (Heath Ledger).

The Dark Knight, the sequel to Batman Begins (2005), improves on the original in nearly every way, shrugging off the shackles of the “comic book” label to deliver a gripping, adult drama that’s nearly perfect.

Everything that didn’t work in the first film is gone. The stagey, wooden, shantytown sets? Replaced by the striking skyscrapers of Chicago and Hong-Kong. Katie Holmes? Replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who’s much more believable as a district attorney. Awkward origin involving far-east ninjas? Gone.

Writing with his brother, Jonathan, director Christopher Nolan crafts an epic tale of good and evil, order and chaos, and the fine line between them. Recognizing the inherit similarities between the Batman and Joker characters, Nolan scripts them as two halves of the same coin, using Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent as a living, breathing extension of the metaphor that dovetails perfectly with the story. Dent is like the big brother Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne never had, and the script nails their interactions perfectly.

But the film’s big revelation is Heath Ledger, who gives a tour-de-force performance as the Joker. Nolan and Ledger eschew the clown-themed-criminal motif that’s dominated the character on film and opt for a raw, chaotic, force of nature. The Joker is Batman’s mirror image, a path Bruce might have gone down following the death of his parents, and Ledger nails it with an award worthy performance.

Yet The Dark Knight isn’t perfect. Aside from the scattered snippets of expository dialog, two scenes in particular are wrong.

The first deals with the Joker invading a party Bruce Wayne has thrown as a fundraiser for Harvey Dent. Wayne sneaks off to change into his Batman outfit then confronts the Joker in full view of all the party guests. While I’m sure this made for a better scene visually, it jars the suspension of disbelief, especially after the first film made a point of showing how Batman used darkness and camouflage to take down large numbers of foes. Further, Batman dives out of the window to rescue one of the guests, leaving the Joker and his crew alone in a room full of Gotham’s wealthiest citizens. While this could have been explored as yet another of the difficult moral choices the Joker forces on Batman, the script opts to simply move on to the next scene and we’re left to assume everyone was okay.

The second scene involves Batman confronting the Joker in a police interrogation room. Again, it jars the suspension of disbelief as Batman’s doing so in a very well lit room with an entire police precinct watching through a two-way mirror. Wouldn’t he be slightly worried somebody might recognize him under those bright lights?

But these are really nitpicks of a great film. There are so many little things Nolan gets right, like having everyone say “The Batman” versus just “Batman”, that make it easy to overlook his few missteps. In the end, The Dark Knight may not be utterly perfect, but it’s probably the closest we’re going to get.