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The Dark Knight Essay

Decent Essays

"The Dark Knight" is grimly magisterial. It's a summer blockbuster that contemplates near-total civic disaster: Crowds surge, tractor-trailers flip, and buildings explode, but the pop violence feels heavy, mournful. Light barely escapes the film's gravitational pull.

Yet flitting through this 10-ton expressionist murk is a diseased butterfly with stringy hair and a maniacal giggle. Played by a dead actor, he's the most alive thing here.

It's not quite fair to say that the late Heath Ledger steals "The Dark Knight" from Christian Bale and the forces of (problematic) good, but, as the Joker, he is the movie's animating principle and anarchic spark - an unstoppable force colliding with the immovable objects of Batman and director …show more content…

Confusion reigns in the opening scenes; loose threads abound toward the end (including one major figure literally left hanging).

Yet the generous midsection works as an agonized big-muscle action film about a conflicted superhero. As Bruce Wayne, Bale is gravely shallow, and he lacks the sense of fun Robert Downey Jr. gave his obscenely rich playboy in "Iron Man." Bruce uses his secret identity as a hidden camera to glean information from the city's upper echelons, but he's not quite there otherwise. This, oddly, is what makes him interesting, both to us and to assistant DA and ex-girlfriend Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, taking over from Katie Holmes and providing the character - at last - with a spine and a brain).

Batman's a whole other story. The filmmakers have worked out the mask problems from the previous film; Bale fills the suit with grace and danger. His voice is disguised as well - it's now a bass-heavy synthesized whisper. The character seems more than ever an extension of his high-tech toys (like the neat-o Bat-scooter that pops out of the Batmobile at one point, ecstatically rearing up like the Lone Ranger's Silver). He represents a citizen's darkest urges, though, and it eats at him. He's Dirty Harry crossed with Hamlet.

The complicated plot involves Batman, Gordon, and Dent putting the squeeze on the mobsters, who look to the

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