i vaguely remember batman begins. this film jumps right back in, assuming that the viewer already knows all of the characters and can recall their histories and relationships. i actually didn’t even remember bruce breaking up with rachel, and their dynamic was made even more disorienting by the fact that she was played by a different actress in the dark knight. that aside, i’ll move on to the review itself.
everyone came into the film with high expectations. even sites like rottentomatoes.com gave the movie a collective 95% critic rating. every person i talked to raved about the dark knight and had nothing bad to say about it. unfortunately, i didn’t share the same response as the bulk of the viewers and critics.
my first reaction was that it was way too heavy on the self-righteous vigilante justice aspect that most superhero movie employ. everyone is so consumed by this idea of doing “what’s best for gotham” that they completely abandon what i feel is rational human behavior. the long monologues by characters like harvey and batman about all this made the film seem preachy and somewhat irritating to me. of course batman is a vigilante. it doesn’t need to be constantly explained and proven to us by just how much he’s willing to sacrifice (i.e. everything, including the life of the woman he’s in love with). it made some sense that he was thinking of turning himself in to stop the joker killings, but to save harvey over rachel without a second thought and then take the fall for everything that the joker did at the end to preserve harvey’s good name? maybe i missed something here, but wasn’t that sort of unnecessary?
the violence level of the film seemed about on track for a batman movie. heath ledger’s performance was the only redeeming feature of the film. the hype around his character was certainly increased in response to his death, but i think regardless of that, it was still a solid and captivating performance. i’m not so cynical as to side with the argument that people only come to these things for the violence. i think people enjoy the action, the suspense, and the plot and characters when they’re done well. but i had trouble getting past the self-righteous tone that prevailed throughout the entire film. there were some good suspenseful scenes and unexpected plot twists and turns. overall, i didn’t love the movie, but i did enjoy it for what it was. i just wish it had ended at least half an hour before it finally did and maybe had a couple of scenes that didn’t take place at night.
