Movie Review: The Dark Knight

(Navy Pier Cinemas, Chicago, Illinois) How do you follow up on the brilliant Batman Begins? With The Dark Knight. It's terrific. I won't reveal any of the plot of The Dark Knight in this review.

Like a lot of other movie goers I had been counting down the days to the release of The Dark Knight. Along about the end of June it started to feel like Christopher Nolan's follow up to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight would never get here. Inevitably, with so many people talking about The Dark Knight , waiting for the movie, and hoping The Dark Knight would be as good as Batman Begins, The Dark Knight had to be an incredible movie just to meet everyone's expectations. And it is.

A large part of the expectations for The Dark Knight were staked on Heath Ledger's performance as Batman's rival, the Joker. Movies like The Dark Knight are memorable years after they're made because of the great villains in them, not the heroes. Case in point, the original Batman. But, as much as I enjoyed Jack Nicholson's Joker in the original Batman movie, as I watched Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight I realized that this was the Joker I had been waiting for. Heath Ledger's Joker is no pun-tossing wise-guy clown. Ledger's Joker is a psychopathic, murdering, schizo and unlike the Joker in the original Batman movie he's plenty scary.

Heath Ledger's Joker in TheDark Knight hit all the right notes. Ledger somehow put aside the Jack Nicholson portrayal of the original Batman movie and reinvented the Joker character as his own for The Dark Knight. The voice, makeup, the mannerisms are all are fresh and re-invented for this role . Neither the performance nor the Joker's costume or makeup are over the top and the terrific performance Ledger turns in goes a long way to make the Joker a fitting rival for Batman and to make The Dark Knight a great movie.

Ledger would be 29 if he hadn't died this past January in a somewhat sad way, and as I watched the movie it did occur to me to make comparisons between Heath Ledger and his performance in The Dark Knight and James Dean, the actor/cult figure who died in a dramatic and tragic car crash before the release of his 1954 film Giant. Whether the Motion Picture Academy will recognize Ledger with an Oscar or Oscar nomination will be interesting to follow. Ledger's passing and his performance in The Dark Knight weigh for it but on the other hand The Dark Knight is a summer blockbuster, and with some exceptions summer blockbusters traditionally don't score too well at Oscar time.

Those who know the history of Batman comic books know that in 1986 Batman was reintroduced to the world as the grim and gritty character that he was in the original 1930s conception. Batman's 1986 re-incarnation was via a comic book mini-series by writer and artist Frank Miller titled, The Dark Knight Returns. Frank Miller's Batman wasn't for children.

The Dark Knight isn't a total reinvention of the action/adventure movie genre. The Dark Knight is still recognizable as a Hollywood blockbuster movie. Like Batman Begins it too follows the tried and true Hollywood action adventure formula. So some compromises were made in the name of commercialism. It's so dark and deep that it's genuinely different, and one step beyond whatever we've ever gotten before in a big action movie. The darker, deeper and grittier The Dark Knight becomes the better it gets. If Batman Begins acknowledged Batman Comic's adult source material, The Dark Knight pays homage to it, and in that sense it's an even better movie than Batman Begins.

This is epic drama. In The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne is in caught in conflict. He can only find peace as Batman. Gotham City needs him as Batman. But, as Batman he's only a symbol; a man on a mission that will let no one or anything stop him. Bruce Wayne the human being is in a sense being sacrificed to Batman. The people of Gotham City, including Bruce Wayne in a sense, are still very much afraid of Batman, he's a mystery, and in Christopher Nolan's vision of the Batman he always will be. Even deeper are the Joker's motivations. The Joker isn't in it for the money. He's pure evil. Then there's Gotham City. In The Dark Knight no one knows what to do about a city whose institutions and infrastructure are on the brink of collapse.

Batman Begins composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard came back to do the film score on The Dark Knight. The music from Batman Begins was much more of a musical idea or even a feeling of music than a traditional music film score. It was two notes! It definitely wasn't the hero music that you'd hum to yourself as you walk along, like for example, the music from Indiana Jones. It was dark and dissonant and fit incredibly well with Nolan's vision of Batman. The dark, haunting musical template from Batman Begins is back but even more skewered to the darker end of the scale in The Dark Knight. The Joker also has his own theme music in The Dark Knight and it's great; a beautifully tortured one note musical idea. It knocked me out when I heard it.

Christian Bale is back as Batman. Bale makes a very good Batman. Michael Caine returns to play Alfred the butler. Whatever money they had to pay him to do these parts was money well spent. Caine didn't go over the top in Batman Begins and he continues to play it straight and true in The Dark Knight too. Gary Oldham, another great actor with a long resume comes back to play now Lieutenant James Gordan one of Gotham City's few honest cops. Also returning are Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox recently-promoted to CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Freeman played a small but critical part in Batman Begins as the source that supplies Bruce Wayne with the high tech gear needed by Batman and he plays a similar role in The Dark Knight . Katie Holmes, who played Bruce Wayne's childhood friend and possible life love Rachael Dawes in Batman Begins, did not return for The Dark Knight citing scheduling conflicts. Maggie Gyllenhaal takes over for The Dark Knight and does a good job in another small critical part.

How dark and bleak and adult is The Dark Knight? There are some effects and scenes in The Dark Knight that are disturbing enough that parents thinking about bringing their young kids to this movie should think twice, especially if they are afraid of clowns, but for any adult who ever bought a comic book years ago or even still enjoys movies, The Dark Knight is a must see.