Batman: The Dark Knight

R4 DVD

Warner Bros

Batman has always been an enigmatic and shadowy superhero, even with the earlier series (if we overlook the camp Batman and Robin of the Sixties), he was a figure whose experience of the world was created as a result of intense personal pain and suffering. While Superman was “Mr.Clean” coming from another planet and never compromised when dealing out justice, Batman was a more idiosyncratic if not flawed and emotionally bruised vigilante.

The more recent Batman films have ranged from the sublime to the average, Tim Burton certainly offered us a dark and Gothic vision but while beautiful to look at it did lack a certain visceral punch. Batman Begins was more of a move in the right direction, showing a disturbed and pained Bruce Wayne, but with Dark Knight the Batman myth really comes into its own.

I must admit I encountered this film with some trepidation, it was heavily marketed and the sad death of Heath Ledger also brought a lot of pressure on the film to be way above average. I wondered if the Dark Knight could live up to the preview clips and images which floated around the internet. I must say I was suitably surprised, if not a little shell-shocked. The dark and polished Gothicism of Gotham city is replaced with a fetid crime ridden city which could be any urban landscape, the villains are credible and the joker is suitably disturbed. Ledger’s portrayal of a criminal on the brink of madness is nothing short of astounding and works as a perfect counterpoint to the dark heart which exists within Bruce Wayne. At the same time there is no simplistic “Good vs. Evil” in the Dark Knight, the scene where Batman barricades the door and essential beats The Joker to a pulp to get the information he needs, make it clear that both The Joker and Batman have gone way beyond their normal limits. In many ways the speech The Joker gives about the nature of himself and Batman as “freaks”, always “outsiders” and never really trusted, only wanted when needed and then discarded was not only poetic and expressive but insightful. There are so many themes and motifs throughout this film that one could spend a long time deciphering them.

In Dark Knight Batman raises the stakes in his war on organised crime by marking currency which the Gotham underworld have been laundering through certain banks. With the help of Lieutenant Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, they trace the funds, target the major crime gangs and arrest them all on a RIKO conspiracy indictment. When an international banker tries to nestle in on the action and offer a solution to the local “bank crisis”, Wayne, using the cover of a Russian Ballet troupe, goes to Hong Kong and in a thrilling and brazen scene, captures and returns the banker to Gotham. However, another criminal is lurking in the background and is able to shatter the illusion of Gotham’s safety in a truly breathtaking and brutal manner - the Joker.

The plot is refined, bringing together themes of conspiracy, organized crime, love and loss and the price of justice to create a powerful cinema experience. This is certainly long film but there is more than enough action to pack three or four movies – ranging from exploding hospitals, out of control semi trailers, gadgets galore and a lot of strong and powerful one-on-one violence.

The acting cannot be faulted, all the characters, major and minor, are exemplary, the film is carried not only by Christian Bale as Batman and Heath Ledger as The Joker, but Gary Oldman as the eccentric Lieutenant Jim Gordon and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes. Aaron Eckhart is truly moving as the legal warrior but ultimately emotional devastated and mentally destroyed Harvey Dent. At the same time we should not forget Tech wizard Lucius Fox played superbly by Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine's evocation of Alfred is right on the money.

It could be said this is a “post modern” Batman, gone are the simple shades of morality and we receive a vision of a city on the brink where fire must be used against fire but the price of such a strategy is high. Along the way there are many deaths, the mental and ethical destruction of District Attorney Harvey Dent and ultimately the death of the legend of Batman as he saves the reputation of Gotham Justice at the cost of his own reputation.