Batman Begins: Batman Begins Blu-Ray: Batman: Gotham Knight: Batman Legacy:
Cert:
Running time: 152 minutes
Year: 2008
Released: 24th July 2008
Widescreen Ratio: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic Panavision)
Sound: DTS, Dolby Digital, SDDS, Sonics-DDP
Director:
Christopher Nolan
Producers:
Christopher Nolan, Charles Rowen and Emma Thomas
Screenplay:
Christopher Nolan & Jonathan Nolan
(based on a story by David Goyer)
Music:
James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer
Cast:
Bruce Wayne/Batman: Christian Bale
The Joker: Heath Ledger
Alfred: Michael Caine
Harvey Dent/Two-Face: Aaron Eckhart
Rachel Dawes: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Lucius Fox: Morgan Freeman
Lt. Jim Gordon: Gary Oldman
Commissioner Gillian B. Loeb: Colin McFarlane
Mayor Anthony Garcia: Nestor Carbonell
Det. Stephens: Keith Szarabajka
Mike Engel: Anthony Michael Hall
Colman Reese: Joshua Harto
Salvatore "Sal" Maroni: Eric Roberts
Lau: Chin Han
Gambol: Michael Jai White
The Chechen: Ritchie Coster
Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow: Cillian Murphy
Gotham National Bank Manager: William Fichtner
After a re-imagining
that successfully scrubbed the bad taste of Batman & Robin ('98) from the
world's collective mouths, Christopher Nolan returns with his eagerly-awaited sequel
to Batman Begins ('05).
The Dark Knight finds Batman (Christian Bale) deciding to
find a crime-fighting heir in "white knight" District Attorney Harvey Dent
(Aaron Eckhart) -- a lantern-jawed public figure cleaning up Gotham's
streets, legitimately. Thrown into an already volatile situation is human hand-grenade
The Joker (Heath Ledger), a psychotic bank robber hired by the city's underworld to kill the Batman...
Undeniably brilliant for long stretches, The Dark Knight is still a
victim of hyperbole to some degree. The storyline doesn't quite have the
texture, nuance and intrigue of
Begins,
but three particularly excellent performances (Ledger, Eckhart and Gary Oldman)
and production improvements are enough compensation to make Knight the equal
of Begins.
Above all, just giving its hero a worthy adversary ensures Knight is enthralling --
in much the same way Superman II is more riveting than the technically superior
Superman: The Movie. The hero's only as good as the villain...
Heath Ledger's performance is the one grabbing the headlines, nudged along by
the actor's untimely death a few months after he finished filming. Ledger's
take on The Joker is one for the ages; an amoral terrorist, face caked in
clown make-up disintegrating in sweat, with reddened mouth scars and stringy
green hair.
A world away from Jack Nicholson's "evil uncle" in Batman ('89),
Ledger's a hunched sneer of tongue-flicking, giggling lunacy. What makes him
frightening is his sheer force of screwball personality; coupled with the fact
his modus operandi is something Batman's never encountered before, and can
barely comprehend -- a man who, to paraphrase butler Alfred (Michael Caine),
"just wants to see the world burn"...
Aaron Eckhart perhaps gives the most refined performance as Harvey Dent, a
good man and face of hope for Gotham who gradually becomes corrupted by The
Joker's machinations, to become Two-Face. It's the only origin story in the
film (The Joker wisely arriving fully-formed and smothered in mystery), and
his downfall is essentially the theme of Dark Knight. Eckhart's no stranger
to playing corrupt men (see: Thank You For Smoking), so he's in a
comfort zone that allows him to bring that experience to bare.
While the finer points of Dent's fall get a bit hazy, the general sweep of his
corruption works very well.
I expected Christian Bale to get lost in the mix, overshadowed by Batman's
most colourful nemesis -- but, while naturally less prominent than he was in
Begins, Nolan refuses to fall into the trap of the earlier films: allowing
Batman to play second fiddle to the villains. Sure, The Joker's antics and
Dent's spiritual demise burn brightest in the memory, but Bale's still given
plenty of room to make an impression.
Again, Bale looks more comfortable as Bruce Wayne -- playing him as a spoilt
rich kid, arriving at fund-raisers in a helicopter with three babes hanging on
his arm. Bruce Wayne's a bit of a big-headed prick in public. Indeed, there
seems to be three persona's at play in Nolan's world: Batman the granite-voiced
vigilante, Wayne the indulgent playboy, and Bruce the humanitarian philanthropist.
Surprisingly, Gary Oldman gives a notable performance as Lieutenant Jim Gordon.
It's not that I don't rate Oldman as an actor; it's just that Gordon was a bit
superfluous in Begins and didn't strike me as being important enough to focus
on in Knight. But his story actually ran parallel to Batman's investigation,
and takes some unexpected twists and turns in the latter stages. For a
character that barely got a look-in during the earlier films, Gordon's success
is indicative of Nolan's real-world perspective on Batman and its close connections
to film noir detective stories.
The supporting cast carried over from Begins continue their fine work: Caine
is dry-witted and anchors the film's humanity, Morgan Freeman's amiable Lucius
Fox has a few neat scenes, and Maggie Gyllenhaal (replacing Katie Holmes
as Rachel Dawes) is fine, if unremarkable. There are a lot of new faces with
relatively minor roles to play, but I was most surprised to see Eric Roberts
giving a decent performance as mob boss Salvatore "Sal" Maroni. And the geek
in me grinned at the presence of Nestor Carbonell (Lost) as Gotham's
Mayor and William Fichtner (Prison Break) as a gun-toting bank manager.
Christopher Nolan is just as confident orchestrating Dark Knight as he was in
Begins, perhaps more so now his crew realize the magic possible from this
comic-book interpretation. The action's slicker, the fight choreography smoother,
and the refinements to Batman's suit and aesthetic of Gotham City (abandoning the
murky, ghetto-like squalor of Begins) are easier on the eye.
There aren't too many set-pieces to satiate audiences after pure blockbuster
escapism, but that's clearly not the driving force behind Dark Knight. This is
a film with ideas, characterisation and themes at the forefront of the script.
It offers food for thought, but not much nourishment in the way of action.
That's not to say there isn't spectacle (a raid in Hong Kong, a car chase, a
game of chicken with the "Batpod", the demolishment of a hospital, etc.), just
that these are brief outbursts in the midst of a crime-based character study.
Overall, The Dark Knight is definitely a top-quality product that picks
up the ball and runs with it. By the end, I didn't feel as invigorated by Knight
as I was by Begins (its freshness has understandably faded in the 3-year wait
between movies), and I think the flow of Begins' script was more sustained and
layered. That said, the villains are far more enjoyable in Knight and Ledger's
performance raises the bar a notch higher.
In fact, it's almost depressing to
realize The Joker's time has come and gone -- because, while I'm sure other
Bat-villains will be rejuvenated in sequels, The Clown Prince Of Crime will be
a very tough act to follow...
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Batman Begins: 
