Movie Review: The Dark Knight

Stars: 2 out of 5
Pros: Heath Ledger's final performance is outstanding

Cons: Dark, long, dark, no character development at all. And did I mention dark?

The Bottom Line:

Seriously dark

And that really turned me off

Just not to my taste

The Title Should Have Given Me a Clue

Batman and I have a love/hate relationship. He often seems to be dark and serious, and I don't care for the overly dark. When he gets to be lighter, I enjoy him. And seriously, when you look at the villains on his roster, there should be some fun there.

I reluctantly went to see Batman Begins, and loved the character development. Despite my initial reactions to the previews for The Dark Knight, I went to see it. And I'm very sorry I did.

The criminal element in Gotham City is on the run. It's really a triple effort thanks to Batman (Christian Bale), Lieutenant Gordon (Gary Oldman), and new DA Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).

But just as they are centering in on the leaders of organized crime, a new villain emerges. The Joker (Heath Ledger) is attempting to become the next leader, getting all the other criminals behind him. And as he wins their confidence, things get worse in the city. Can Batman save the day?

The movie started out fine. There were some genuine laughs. The action started early and came often. The story was interesting.

But the longer it went, the more depressing it got. The Joker is ruthless, harming people and creating horrid situations just for the fun of it. And the longer the movie goes, the more gruesome it gets. I don't know if we ever saw any blood, but there were enough stomach churning images that it hardly matters. How this movie escaped the R rating it deserved is beyond me. And the violence wore me down so much, I actually stopped caring about how any of the characters would fare.

Maybe it was because I wasn't enjoying the movie, but it was also way too long. They should have cut out one or two plot points. Or maybe an entire sub-plot. By the time we'd reached the climax, I was more than ready for things to end. And the quick cuts between all the situations did nothing to help me.

Now I know what you're thinking. What were you expecting from a movie entitled The Dark Knight? Did you not see the promos? Yeah, I know. I have only myself to blame. And I do blame myself for ignoring the signs.

As a story, this movie was only okay. They really tried to cram too much into the movie for it to work. The results were rather scattered, especially in the final hour. And it doesn't help that The Joker is a random villain, at least as depicted here.

What impressed me so much with the first movie was the character development. That was completely missing here. You'd think in two and a half hours, we'd get something. But that would have taken away from gruesome images and explosions. Oh, they tried to put some in there, but it came off feeling trite.

Maybe it's a coin toss whether I should blame the writers or actors for that triteness. Frankly, I felt the actors were just going through the motions. I felt no emotion from Christian Bale at all. Michael Caine was fine as Alfred as was Morgan Freedman as Lucius Fox. Maggie Gyllenhaal steps into the Rachel Dawes role played by Katie Holmes in the first. Frankly, I thought Katie did a much better job. Gary Oldman did okay as Gordon, and Aaron Eckhart was one of the few standouts as Harvey Dent.

You'll notice the one name I left out of that list. Heath Ledger was absolutely brilliant as The Joker. If he was on screen, I couldn't look away even if I wanted to. His performance earns this movie its second star. It's just too bad his outstanding final portrayal is stuck is such a poor film.

I went into The Dark Knight expecting to enjoy it. But the longer it went on, the more stars it shed. Unless you like your films dark and gruesome, avoid this one at all costs.