Everyone coming out of “The Dark Knight” this weekend had little light bulbs hovering over their heads aglow with the realization that the next time they’re in the mood for great, thought-provoking literature, they can head right to their nearest comic book store.
The brilliant Batman epic Hulk-leaps the comic book genre well into the serious cinema range thanks to a truly twisted dance along the thin grey line between good and evil choreographed in part by the astounding acting stylings of the late Heath Ledger (“Brokeback Mountain”).
With his grimy hair and grease-painted face, Ledger’s Joker makes Jack Nicholson’s Oscar-nominated rendition of the iconic villain look like Caesar Romero’s stand in.
Ledger’s Joker is an enigma wrapped in a bandolier stuffed with dynamite. With his stooped shoulders and big, sad clown eyes, he’s a completely unassuming villain until you realize that he’s ten times worse — he’s a maniacal chess master bent on annihilation, five moves ahead of everyone else before the previews rolled.
In this incarnation, lovingly handled by writer/director Christopher Nolan, the devil is in the lack of details.
Instead of giving the character a back story like Tim Burton did in his gothic take on Gotham City, Nolan gives the Joker several origins, which Ledger recounts with a nerd-like glee every time he’s about to hurt someone really, really badly.
He’s genuinely scary; he's so frightening he could make Iron Man pee in his aluminum-lined Underoos.
Thank goodness, then that he has to face the Batman, who’s pretty frightening in his own right.
Kicking off just a short time after “Batman Begins,” Christian Bale’s (“3:10 To Yuma”) caped crusader is working with the law, and is dispatched out of the country every now and again to reign in a crime lord who's fled the jurisdiction.
Realizing that the Joker — who also happens to be looking for the same crime boss, but just so he can complete phase one of his menacing plan — is too much to handle alone, he recruits the help of hotshot District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart, “Meet Bill”) and the frazzled Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”), who somehow gets promoted every time the Joker drops another cop.
While he could have easily kept the dialogue light and the explosions heavy, Nolan, who co-wrote the script with his brother Jonathan, finds brilliance in the basics.
His story (which has just a few big, but memorable, action sequences with thankfully almost no CGI) slowly weaves into a truly troubling Shakespearian tragedy in which everyone — including Alfred (Michael Caine, “The Prestige”) — is left scarred just as badly as the Joker.
If Nolan hasn’t achieved cinematic glory with “The Dark Knight,” he’s certainly flicked on a Bat Signal of his own, letting everyone know that his next production — hopefully an even darker sequel — is going to be a Hollywood masterpiece.
Starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Running time: 152 minutes. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and some menace.
