The Dark Knight

A darker 'Knight': Ledger's Joker brings a twisted smile to a long and brooding Batman sequel

July 17, 2008|Ty Burr, Globe Staff

Two hours and 32 minutes long, "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 Christopher Nolan's ambitions. Much more serious in intent and message than 2005's "Batman Begins," "Dark Knight" would be fatally ponderous without Ledger's nasty little sprite. As it is, the movie strains at its own Wagnerian seams.

"Knight" begins where "Begins" left off, with Gotham City desperately trying to wrest itself from the grip of the criminal underworld. New mob boss Salvatore Maroni (Eric Roberts) cuts deals with the Russians and Chi nese while the media tries to figure out whether this Batman guy is a hero or a vigilante. Imitation Batmen run amok, led by the earlier film's Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy, in a brief and unexplained appearance). And someone is robbing the mob banks of Gotham, leaving a Joker behind as a calling card.

Is Lieutenant Gordon (Gary Oldman) of the Major Crimes Unit somehow involved in the heists or merely taking advantage of them to seize the bad guys' assets? What does the new district attorney, a white knight named Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), want? Why is Wayne Enterprises holding merger talks with a shady Hong Kong businessman (Chin Han)? "The Dark Knight" takes a while to sort itself out; even at 152 minutes, you can feel the three-hours-plus monster this was carved from. 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).