The Dark Knight

Superhero movies have a tricky job these days. Like the James Bond series, the days are long gone when a supervillain could hollow out a volcano and take over the world demanding effectively nothing but power. These days villains need to have reasons for their problems and superheros need to go on a personal journey. Realism is the key.

Except, at the end of the day, you're still dealing with super-powered individuals, which requires more than just accepting, say, that a computer can digitally enhance a photo to the ultimate extreme. Marvel Movies seem to have got the balance just right, putting their flawed heroes against villains whose motives tend to revolve around patriotism, revenge or just the plain old desire to get a lot of hard cash. DC Movies have been a bit hit and miss. In the 70s and 80s they ruled the big screen with such movies as Superman and Batman, but in the norties, things haven't quite been going all their way and while Batman Begins hit the right buttons, Superman Returns was waaaay off base.

The Dark Knight, unfortunately, misses.

It's funny that when Batman Returns came our people were unhappy, saying - quite rightly - that it wasn't so much a Batman film as a Tim Burton film. The Dark Knight suffers from curiously the same sort of problem; it's not a Batman film, rather it's a Chris Nolan film with Batman inserted into it. Imagine Insomnia but with Robin Williams wearing clown makeup and Al Pacino dressing up as a bat.

And that's a big problem, because as soon as you're dealing with these things reality needs to go the aforementioned heightened state or else when things that are unbelievable happen, they stick out like a sore thumb.

One of the things about this movie is, that with the death of Heath Ledger, virtually no one wants to be honest about his performance. It's wonderful, it's worthy of a posthumous Academy Award... In truth, it's not. Ledger has the prosthetics and the makeup, and then puts on a silly voice and a silly walk and plays a psychotic. Which is fine, except that essentially the Joker is a hugely flamboyant villain. Oh yes, Ledger's Joker is deadly and scary, but he's not the Joker. He's too focused to be an agent of chaos. He rambles on about how he has no plans, but it's mentioned time and time again that he plans everything, almost fastidiously. Ledger's Joker claims to be insane, but really, he's cold and calculating and vicious. A good villain, but not the arbitary showman that the Joker is in all of his best incarnations. Ledger gets it right twice, but unfortunately, that ain't good enough.

Fortunately, on the other hand, Christian Bale seems determined to make him look good by phoning in his performance. The frivolous playboy of Batman Begins has gone, replaced by a dour, soulless Wayne who looks the playboy, but has no heart for it. Batman, on the other hand, is even worse, with Bale's growling voice reaching a point where it is almost impossible on occasion to actually work out what he is saying.

The dearth of humour is failing in the film in general. There is very little humour to be found and when it happens it's extremely obvious how little there is. The other, unforgiveable aspect of this action movie is that there is surprisingly little action. What action there is, is handled with aplomb, and the chase sequence is one of the best committed to film, but Nolan seems to have had a little bit of drama here, a little bit of action here, a little bit of drama there and a little bit of action there. For the rest of the time, it is people talking to each other; obtaining or recounting the same bits of information. We get no less than two sequences assuring us that we don't know the Joker's true identity; completely missing the point that the audience assumes that when the movie starts. When it's established that the Joker has no motive, his true identity is redundant and so we don't care. And let me take this opportunity to say that the manner in which Batman obtains the Joker's fingerprint makes an absolute mockery of the realism that Nolan has attempted to create.

As real as they've tried to make the Joker - having scars to create his smile, rather than acid deformation - Batman, on the other hand, has become completely unrealistic, now possessing an inordinate amount of gadgets that would make Adam West green with envy. His gloves can cut through car metal, and he can use them to bend rifle barrels. He is able to rig up a sonar system using mobile phones that not only show you the shapes, but also the SWAT logo on the SWAT teams. For every moment of realism that is generated, the whole thing is urinated on with something that is so unbelievable you can't remember what movie you're watching.

The writing is primarily at fault here, as said, giving characters nothing to do for the majority of the movie, except talk and achieve nothing. When repitition is needed, it fails to appear. Joker gives two reasons for the scars on his face, and that's all. The magic number is three, and so in this case it looks like Goyer and Nolan have failed to remember what the Joker's background is, rather than showing he creates his own.

Sadly Michael Caine still misses the mark as Alfred, though to his credit he does try very hard to bring the character to life and give him some depth and sympathy. Maggie Gyllenhaal, however, delivers much the same performance Katie Holmes did, and so fails to make anything of a character that was essentially crap in the first place.

But there are some great things about this movie. Aaron Eckhart is outstanding as Harvey Dent, stealing every scene he is in, and the "Two-Face" plotline is easily the best thing in the movie. I found myself constantly wishing Ledger would get off screen so we could see more of the Two-Face story. Gary Oldman steals all the scenes left over, portraying a very, very sympathetic Gordon. The final scene between Dent and Gordon is the most electic in the whole movie. Eric Roberts, surprisingly, is superb as mob-boss Sal and Morgan Freeman, of course, can't put a foot wrong. The scene where he points out the absurdity of blackmailing Batman/Bruce Wayne is wonderfully underplayed.

The Dark Knight is a missed opportunity and sadly, despite the brilliant diamonds out there, you have to wade through a lot of excrement to get to them.

"C-"