by Scott Mendelson

The Dark Knight is above all an emotionally and physically draining
roller coaster ride and morality play. In most circles, expectations
are nothing short of all-time greatness, but writer/director Chris
Nolan makes a few tactical blunders that prevent the picture from
achieving the mythical status that it so craves. Rare is the movie
where declaring that it isn't a masterpiece almost qualifies as a pan.
It's aspirations are so high that its flaws and concessions to
commerciality are that much more apparent. Yet while this obscenely
entertaining Batman film is not perfect, but it's still a towering
achievement.

A token amount of plot: This sequel picks up a year after Batman
Begins. Batman, Lt. Jim Gordon, and District Attorney Harvey Dent are
putting the final squeeze on the Gotham mob scene, with the help of
the new squeaky-clean and inspiring DA, Harvey Dent. Alas,
complications involving a Hong Kong businessman and the seemingly
motiveless bloodshed and chaos of a pasty-faced madman known as The
Joker (Heath Ledger) will soon jeopardize everything.

Taking inspiration from Heat and The Untouchables, writer/director
Chris Nolan has attempted a crime opera rather than a comic book
adventure. For all intents and purposes, Gotham City is now downtown
Chicago without a trace of the gothic art deco designs of previous
Batman films. There are several large scale action sequences, and for
the most part they are slightly less choppy and better edited than
Batman Begins. But the real meat is in the complicated narrative and
character interaction, especially between Batman and The Joker.

The emotional arc of The Dark Knight involves three good men as they
attempt to cope with unstoppable and inexplicable evil without
corrupting their own morality. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) sees the
idealistic Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) as a man who can inspire people
without a mask and with complete devotion to law and order, to the
point where there may not be a need for Batman. Gary Oldman anchors
the movie with one of his best performances. His James Gordon is a
sobering portrait of a man who makes integrity and decency exciting in
a city where both are in short supply.

To answer the next question, Heath Ledger is terrifically fun with a
definitive and spellbinding take on The Joker that is every bit the
equal of Jack Nicholson and Mark Hamill (his laugh, his mouth work,
and his inflection in quieter moments are actually similar to
Nicholson). Played to the hilt as pure Id and sociopathic glee, he is
simply walking death. Presented as a remorseless, murderous force of
nature, The Joker has no back story and little character development,
and his ultimate motive is a civics lesson in mass pandemonium. Nolan
only allows him to show up just enough to cast a dark shadow over the
rest of the film and Ledger's work is a stellar supporting turn in the
best sense of the word.

Bale again makes a compelling Bruce Wayne, and his philosophical
interplay with Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and Alfred Pennyworth
(Michael Caine) are again highlights. All three debate what moral
lines they will or will not cross to stop a completely immoral
monster, while one subplot will be bittersweet to those who have been
following the recent FISA debate in Washington. However, the voice
that Christian Bale uses for Batman sounds even more cartoonish than
in Batman Begins. The vocal choice comically sounds like what it is -
a soft-spoken man trying to sound gruff and angrily macho (at times,
he sounds like McGruff: The Crime Dog).

Maggie Gyllenhaal makes an acceptable replacement for Dawes, more
convincing than Katie Holmes as an ADA but less compelling as Bruce
Wayne's moral compass. One of the refreshing things about Batman
Begins was that Rachel Dawes was not primarily the love interest, but
rather a source of compassion and caution to a young and reckless
Bruce Wayne (she was almost the Leslie Thompkins of this particular
Batman mythology). Here, alas, her primary purpose now is her role in
the love triangle between Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne.

Chris Nolan has attempted something bold and daring, trading in the
optimistic and introspective Batman Begins for a dark and pessimistic
meditation on moral compromise and blowback. The story itself
eventually comes to involve not just the battle between heroes and
villains, but the choices that innocent civilians make in times of
terror and mania.

While lower in body count than Tim Burton's Batman, the violence is
potent and the film is incredibly intense throughout (do not bring the
kids). There are several worthwhile plot twists, and there is a
constant sense of dread and looming doom that permeates the picture
(there are more than a few intense montages of mounting doom as
several threads threaten to culminate in violence). However, the need
to combine R-rated content with a PG-13 format leads to an obtuseness
to the carnage. The violence is presented with lots of quick cutting
and obscure angles, to the point where it's occasionally difficult to
discern what happened.

Amid the fine acting, rich characters, and crackerjack scenes of epic
action and tragic violence, there is just too much, and yet not
enough. More so than in Batman Begins, Nolan again feels the need to
over-explain story points and character themes through lengthy
monologues. And there is just too much story for this one film. The
Dark Knight is seemingly thestory that Nolan wanted to tell in the
second and third films of the series. But since he doesn't know if he
will return, he tried to stuff everything into one sequel.

Thus, this 152-minute epic feels too short by at least thirty-minutes.
Batman himself ends up getting the short shrift, and it's a bitter
irony that we've now returned to a Batman film series where Batman
must fight for screen time against his supporting cast. Even Harvey
Dent's arc gets shortchanged, with a finale that will remind people,
not in a good way, of Spider-Man 3. In fact, Eckhart's Harvey Dent
comes off as less psychologically realistic and complicated than
Richard Moll's performance in Batman: The Animated Series. Either
Nolan should have made this a two-hour film concentrating on Batman
and The Joker, or he should have made a three-hour Batman epic. We're
left with a film that's both too long and too short.

Despite several genuine flaws, the film works splendidly as a Batman
story, an action drama, and an intelligent and thoughtful adult
entertainment. That it's merely one of the best films of the year and
not the greatest movie ever made is no shame. By any rational
standard, The Dark Knight is a triumph.

Grade: A-

RATING (0 TO ****):  ** 1/2

So, you're probably thinking, can THE DARK KNIGHT be nearly as good as its
mind-blowing and riveting trailers?  Not even close, I am very sorry to say.
In one of the most disappointing films of the year, THE DARK KNIGHT is a
pale shadow of its marvelous predecessor, BATMAN BEGINS, which I could watch
over and over again.

While BATMAN BEGINS was consistently riveting, THE DARK KNIGHT is very much
a mixed bag.  Mixed with the flashes of absolute brilliance are long dead
sections.  This, the second of director Christopher Nolan's BATMANs, left me
more often bored than entertained.  It's a good thing that the long, slow
stretches are periodically interrupted by some terrific moments, otherwise
this is a BATMAN that could put you to sleep, as it almost did me a couple
of times.

This frequently mean-spirited film -- do we really need child endangerment
scenes? -- takes itself way too seriously.  When it's willing to inject some
humor, either in its dark scenes, as in the Joker's magic act in which he
makes a pencil disappear into a guy's eye, or in its humorous gadgets, the
movie becomes much more enjoyable.

The story starts when the Joker and his pals are busy robbing a mob owned
bank.  "Pals" is something of a misnomer, since the Joker is a psychopath
who likes to kill everyone around him, even his co-conspirators.  As
everyone on the planet probably knows by now, the Joker this time is played
by the tragically deceased Heath Ledger (Oscar nominee for his part in
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN).

Although Christian Bale repeats his star turn as both Bruce Wayne and
Batman, it will undoubtedly be Ledger's performance that everyone will be
talking about.  At first, I was a bit mesmerized by Ledger's acting here,
but it quickly became obvious that it was a one-note performance, so it went
from being interesting to becoming increasing tiresome.  Ledger speaks in
droll monotones, broken only occasionally by short bursts of creepy
laughter.  His best work in the picture is when he shuts up entirely and
just stares hauntingly into the camera lens, like a circus clown who has
been sent to jail.

There are some aspects that work with great regularity in THE DARK KNIGHT,
but these have nothing to do with the characters themselves.  Later
discussing the film with my son, I realized how detached I had become from
the storyline.  None of the characters are ever worth caring about, so when
some died or came back from the dead, I just didn't care in the least.

The images, the music and the sound consistently dazzle you.  When the movie
cranks up the volume and pulls back the camera, letting you watch Batman fly
with majestic power over Gotham City, it's hard to keep chills from going up
and down your spine, since it is so gorgeous and moving.

But, running a little over two and one half hours long, the movie becomes
more of an endurance contest than a treat.  (BATMAN BEGINS was long too, but
it made much better use of the time, avoiding long slack sections.)  At the
ninety-minute mark, THE DARK KNIGHT comes up to a fine conclusion.  It then
spends another sixty minutes trying out several more possible endings.

What becomes obvious from the ending it finally selects is that everything
that is wrong with THE DARK KNIGHT will probably be kept in its sequel,
which looks like it will probably be even more pretentious, if that is
possible, than THE DARK KNIGHT.  Still, I believe that buried within THE
DARK KNIGHT is a normal length movie that could have earned at least a star
more from me.  This shorter and more focused THE DARK KNIGHT would be well
worth seeing.

Sure THE DARK KNIGHT will make a mint and the fanboys will undoubtedly go
gaga over it, but, in my mind, it's a certain candidate for my list of this
year's most overrated movies.

THE DARK KNIGHT runs a very long 2:32.  It is rated PG-13 for "intense
sequences of violence and some menace" and would be acceptable for
teenagers.

My son Jeffrey, age 19, and a big BATMAN fan, gave it ***.  He liked it
quite a bit, but he had problems with it too, chief among these being the
numerous long, self-indulgent monologues.  He liked the way the film was
darker, and he liked Ledger as the Joker, although he thinks Jack Nicholson
might have been better.  He loved the sound and the look of the picture.
But he found it way too long and thought many scenes and several entire
characters should have been eliminated.  Overall, he has mixed feelings
about the film, thinking sometimes it was absolutely amazing and other times
it just wasn't.  He said that it was definitely worth one star less than his
rating for BATMAN BEGINS, which he thoroughly loved.

The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, July 18, 2008.  In
the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century
theaters and the Camera Cinemas.

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