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'Knight' Definitely Belongs To Ledger

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By KEVIN WALKER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 17, 2008

Here are the main things you need to know about "The Dark Knight": It is the best of the "Batman" movies. Actually, by my lights, it's the best movie in the superhero genre (move over, "Spider-Man 2").

And as it turns out, Heath Ledger really is as good as advertised. He disappears into the role of The Joker, something Jack Nicholson never managed in the 1989 "Batman" film. It's a mesmerizing performance in which Ledger somehow makes the green-haired homicidal maniac more horrifying and also more sympathetic.

And yes, the fact that Ledger is dead gives the performance a certain resonance. But that's hard to explain without giving away one of the film's many surprises.

Most important, director Christopher Nolan and his brother, Jonathan Nolan, take on far more than the average superhero movie in their screenplay. Stealing a page from such comic book masters as Frank Miller and Alan Moore, they use the complex Batman character - and his opposite, The Joker (a sort of Bizarro Batman, when you think about it) - to explore the thin line between rationality and madness, the importance of rules in civil society and where to draw the line in the pursuit of evil.

The film starts about where "Batman Begins" (2005) left off. Rich playboy Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) still stalks the night as Batman, hunting down criminals. The CEO of Wayne Enterprises, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), continues to invent cool toys for him to use. His ex-girlfriend, Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), is a crusading assistant district attorney. Her new boyfriend is district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).

Impressed by Dent's passion for taking down organized crime, Batman and Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman) team up with him in an effort to incarcerate the leaders of the major mob families. The wild card - heh heh - is The Joker.

At first considered a minor annoyance by both Batman and the mob, The Joker is taken a bit more seriously when he demonstrates his abilities to the crime chiefs (including a magic trick surely to be much discussed). His profile grows as the film progresses, until in a tense sequence he attempts to take out several important city leaders.

His real intentions are more nefarious: He's out to prove even the most moral person is only a bad day away from madness (a theme that reflects the one in "The Killing Joke," a Batman graphic novel by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland). In Batman, he thinks he has found someone who might understand. As he tells Batman, "You're not one of them, as much as you might want to be. To them, you're a freak. Like me."

The plot is serpentine, full of surprises and definitely not for young children. The film is almost unrelentingly grim, other than some comic moments between Wayne and his major domo, Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine).

Although Bale is again good and the cast is solid, it is Ledger who will be the most discussed, and deservedly so. Whether he gets any sort of posthumous acting award is beside the point. He has left behind a performance that will be remembered.

MOVIE REVIEW

The Dark Knight ****

MOVIE BOARD RATING: PG-13; for intense sequences of violence and some menace

STARS: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Maggie Gyllenhaal

DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan

LOCATION: See movie times, Page 7, for local showtimes.

PLOT SUMMARY: Batman takes on the Mob and a new enemy, a homicide maniac called The Joker.

RUNNING TIME: 150 minutes

ON THE WEB: thedarkknight.warnerbros.com

Kevin Walker can be reached at kwalker@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7975.

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