Yes, I know, I've got some explaining to do. My decision for giving this film a rotten rating is actually resting on paradoxical sands. If this film was less serious, carried less moral weight, and didn't contain potent messages, I don't think it would be getting a negative review. But the fact that it is serious, that the filmmakers did intend to challenge the viewer with grotesque situations, that they deliberately pulled our emotional strings, and that they decidedly drew conscious parallels with current political situations, should place upon them great responsibility to the viewer. And the fact is, this story cheats. The movie cheats, and despite the great performances, action sequences, and its often noble intentions and ambitions, on principle I will give a bad review. You simply can't take advantage of an audience like this. You can't intentionally persuade people to be moved so deeply on false premises. I compare this movie more with something like 'Silence of the Lambs' than 'Iron Man.' That's how creepy and dark it is. There are reasons why filmmakers are very careful about making Holocaust pictures. The Nolan brothers should have taken a step back and thought it through once more on this one.
What exactly do I mean when I say a movie cheats? There are many cliche examples (Watch 'Hot Fuzz') like bad guys firing off rounds and rounds of automatic guns and not hitting anything. There's the implausibly tough female, the indestructible man, and who can forget the old 'Oh my god we're about to be hit by train!' Here in this movie is a version of the 'insurmountable enemy,' a villain with such incredible mobility, intelligence, and material at his disposal that any attempt to beat him becomes implausible. The first time we see the Joker he's robbing a bank. He has told his flunkies to kill each other off so he can keep all the loot. By the end there's just him. The next time we see him he's got new flunkies, the police take one of them in. He turns out to be a schizophrenic psychotic. We are told most of his flunkies are. Now I don't have a masters in business management, but how does one run an organization that is intelligent enough to pull off triple crosses, infiltrate and intimidate the entire police and D.A. office, and have enough foresight to do some of the insane things in this picture with a gang of psychotic madmen that have a habit of killing each other off. The thing about the Joker, and these are his words, is that he's a force of chaos. At one point he admits he never has a plan. Where and when he says this is especially ironic. He says this to the new Harvey Two-Face in a hospital that he apparently has just rigged to explode. Keep in mind that like an hour ago, he had been in this abandoned warehouse taking over the entire mob. He set a spectacle by setting 34 million dollars on fire. The money's in this big pyramid, which someone had to take days to build. Who? Who knows. Not the Joker because he's been taping himself in some penthouse torturing policeman. In just a few hours after he blows up the hospital, he somehow sneaks 100 barrels of oil and a couple bombs into two ferries. He figures out how to stop their engines, take over the PA system and cast forth dire messages all from some abandoned skyscraper, where apparently he found time to take hostages and dress them up as clowns to perform yet another double cross on police snipers who would have no idea where to find the Joker if it hadn't been for Batman's top secret surveillance techniques. Therefore Joker must have super intuition or super paranoia to prepare himself for things he logically should know nothing about. My point is that this guy has to be some sort of super genius at logistics and coordination to pull any of this off. Does that reconcile with Heath Ledger's portrayal of a chaotic madman?
Commissioner Gordon may be a nice guy but he's a horrible police chief. His hapless cops go around in SWAT patrols getting completely blind sided by the Joker's forces, losing to them most of the time in direct confrontations. I wonder where The Joker is getting the manpower to do these things. I wonder where he gets big rigs, garbage trucks, and a vast number of empty warehouses. How does he know exactly where to trip up a helicopter? If I wasn't mistaken, half the criminal underworld was jailed early in the picture. Who are these people? There is also a bigger question of how they get paid, what with the Joker's penchant for lighting all of his money on fire.
In a lesser movie this sort of thing wouldn't matter as much. But 'The Dark Knight' is rife with deep scenes and a couple grotesque situations that shock your conscience. I glared at the screen hoping the makers of this film didn't have the gall to blow up a ferry full of people in a PG-13 film. By that time, I wouldn't be surprised if they did. There was a couple of scenes that reminded me of the 'Saw' franchise. There's a particularly cruel one in which a newly engaged couple are tied to chairs in different places. In front of them is a time bomb and a radio. This way they can conveniently weep to each other as they are waiting to be blown to kingdom come. At least this movie had the taste not to show any real torture, but still we get to hear about it. The Joker explains how he got the scars on his face. The stories are decidely untrue, he changes it every time to befit the situation. Whatever is more horrifying. My God, is he one fucked up dude.
The Dark Knight can conveniently be linked with current political situations. I think it is meant to. The Joker represents forces of evil in the world, Islamic Jihadists come to mind. We don't understand them, we don't know what they want. We can't negotiate with them or buy them. We don't know where they come from, or how they gain the ability to do what they do. Batman here goes through a change, he can't be a willy nilly super hero like Superman. He, as Dick Cheney would say, needs to turn to the dark side to beat the Joker. We see a city wide, highly illegal, super surveillance machine. Batman represents vigilanteism, secret covert action, a necessary evil. He's rough with the bad guys. He throws the Joker around in the interrogation room. I very much expected him to go through with some sort of 'enhanced techniques' in there. As Commissioner Gordon says at the end, Batman isn't a true hero. He doesn't represent our values or wishes. We are waiting for the day when we no longer need someone like him. He is simply the hero we need for these hard times. Wow, what a bad message.
I have yet to get political in my reviews, but this movie necessitates a certain dialogue. So I myself will delve into the dark side to give the counter argument. I think this movie illustrates perfectly the mindset of many Americans that is simply wrong. The fact that we feel, as a nation, a need to delve into the dark side ourselves is because we have a strong misconception of the enemy. We think who we are up against is a form of the Joker. But what this movie illustrates if you look at it closer, and pick it apart like I have, is that an enemy like the Joker is conceivably impossible. No matter what the morals are, we have to admit that flying several different planes into several different buildings at the same time takes a certain amount of logic and coordination. These people are not chaotic psychopaths. They are rational beings that have a great deal of foresight, and to some extent, good management skill. It does no good to label them as crazy, evil, or cowards. That's a fundamental misinterpretation of our problem. Suicide bombers need bombs and paychecks. Like everyone else they eat, drink, and sleep each day, most have families, and all of them have a cultural history. If you understand what that is, then you have gained enormous insight into how they work and what rules they follow. The Joker knew Batman's rules and exploited them tragically. We have yet to figure out how the Joker ticks and he still frightens and confuses us.
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