The Dark Knight

The other evening, we finally got round to seeing The Dark Knight. And damn, it’s good.

Personally, I far preferred it to Batman Begins. Maybe it was just me, but I found a lot of BB didn’t really gel together, and felt more like a sequence of setpieces than a complete film. (And yes, I know that hasn’t stopped one hell of a lot of directors. But there we go, it was how I felt about it) Whatever, my opinion was that Dark Knight was far better written, and it did hold together as a full film.

There are still some weak bits – some of the effects for Two-Face were (in my opinion) decidedly ropy and detracted from the film. Whereas you could believe in Heath Ledger’s Joker, Two-Face was more of a slap in the face of disbelief suspension every time you saw it, and that just never works satisfactorily. And I find the bass-amplified/rasped voice of Batman to be really really annoying after a while. Sure, I know, it’s supposedly ‘disguised’ so people don’t identify the man beneath the mask, but really, it’s just annoying.

And of course then there’s Heath Ledger’s role as the Joker. A lot of the hype is that he’ll get a posthumous Oscar for this film, and I have to say that I’m not convinced on that score. I do think he’s stunning, and I also think that you don’t see him as the Joker and think “Oh yeah, that’s the guy who was in Knight’s Tale” or whatever other film – which for me is the sign of a good actor. He’d also certainly put in enough creepy extra mannerisms, and had made a full-fledged character out of the Joker. But Oscar-worthy? I’m not convinced.

The actor I do think is stunning though, is Gary Oldman. Now there is someone who really doesn’t connect one role with others. In this, you don’t even think of Inspector Gordon as being Gary Oldman. On the other end of the scale there’s Michael Caine, who really can’t be anything else except Michael Caine in another outfit.

All told, I really enjoyed The Dark Knight. I’m also with Dragon on wondering who the bad guys will be in the next one. With the developments in The Dark Knight, the next film will certainly be an interesting ride…



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