DK
I've got a million things I need to be doing and social plans in 20 minutes, but real quick: The Dark Knight?
Okay, I may come back later to say more, but for the moment: what is up with all that bad dialogue? Christian Bale's delivery in the Batsuit is worse, gravellier and sillier, and his lines are so much grander and sillier, his performance just falls apart for me. Interesting to have a movie with Christian Bale as your hero and have him be one of the weakest parts. (Unusual for Bale's performance to be weak in any regard!) But if there's one thing Batman and James Bond have taught us, it's all about the villains. Aaron Eckhart and Heath Ledger? You can't go wrong, and they didn't. (And thanks for a momentary nod/cameo of Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow again, a lesser villain but a great role.) Two-Face's makeup is so beautiful -- made more so by the well-advised scarceness of screen time it gets. The Joker is one of the all-time best villains, and this take on him didn't let me down. But more on that in a second.
What did let me down is all the action sequences. I kind of felt this way about the first one (Batman Begins I mean, not like, Michael Keaton or Adam West or anything), but kept my mouth shut because everybody else seemed to love it so and well, it was a good movie -- but in the sequel I can't let it go. Did fucking Bruckheimer and Tony Scott direct the action sequences? Bazookas and SWAT vans in high speed tunnel chases (which I thought we had our fill of in Begins?) and machine guns and cops and explosions and helicopter crashes and the Batmobile I mean Bat-tank I mean Bat-transformer ... I was bored as hell. The action sucked, it reeked of all the bad action films lately, the pro-military pro-police post-911 bad action formula (look at Transformers, Live Free or Die Hard, or Black Hawk Down-style movies). What happened to BATMAN?? And THE JOKER?! What happened to moving in the night, martial arts/fist-fights with thugs, gadgets and madmen? Why the fucking heavy artillery? BRING BACK MY COMIC BOOK STORIES AND FUCK YOUR PROMILITARY PROCOP AGENDA. Okay I said it.
And that being said -- that the action was Bay-esque weaksauce and the dialogue was over the top in the not-good way -- everything else was pretty fucking rad. The plot worked, the elements worked, the devices and schemes and heists all worked -- fucking A was I in love with the Joker's first bank heist to open the movie... the nonverbal storytelling, the dark twisted scheme of each thug killing another, the Joker's appearance, all of it. I was so hooked. (And before I forget to add, about the supporting cast: 1. how rad is Gary Oldman?; 2. The more I see him lately, the more I think Morgan Freeman's phoning in roles; 3. Worst waste of Maggie Gyllenhaal ever, I could hardly stand any scene with her; 4. Is Michael Caine slumming it, because he must have agreed to do this just for the joy of being a snarky butler.)
And how can I not add -- how can I not address the elephant in the room here -- that it really is a shame Ledger died. Truly at the peak of his career; I don't know if the Joker is what he'd want to be remembered for (I guess it beats "That Gay Cowboy Actor") but the performance had everything you would want, his moments of quiet and his moments of energy were all one mentally deformed, wildly insane supervillain. At least he went out on one hell of a (dark) high note. The last scene of him, hanging upside down (camera flipped to match his perspective) high above the city at night, laughing maniacally... the Joker felt real to me, in a way. That was rad.
Okay. Gotta shower, clean up, do shit. I got that off my chest.