Our comic book-movie culture is 30 years old, and kicked off in 1978 Christopher Reeve’s “Superman.” In those three decades, comic-book films have given us more than their share of spectacle and thrills, yet almost nothing in the way of mystery.
But in “The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan's ominously twisty and exciting sequel to the 2005 film “Batman Begins,” good and evil are not just separate forces. At times, they're a whisper away from each other.
The movie has an intense, predatory glamour that makes the comic-book films that have come before look all the more like kids’ stuff.
Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly reviews "The Dark Knight."
Batman, Christian Bale's snake-hiss-voiced vigilante, plays out the vengeful fantasies that alter ego Bruce Wayne can only dream about. Batman has had some success cleaning up Gotham City, and into the resulting void steps the Joker, a sick puppy in smeary clown makeup who wants to make the world feel his pain.
Heath Ledger's mesmerizing Joker begins with the creepiness of his image -- the greasy long hair, the makeup that looks as if he'd drawn it on with crayons, then messed it with tears. It's his voice, though, that gets you. This Joker may be a vicious torture freak, but he sounds like Al Franken crossed with a nerdish pedophile.
In Ledger’s last performance he completed before his death, he had a maniacal gusto inspired enough to suggest that he might have lived to be as audacious an actor as Marlon Brando -- and maybe as great. The Joker organizes the riffraff mobsters of Gotham City, but only to use them as bait. He creates a whirlpool of corruption that sucks everyone down.
“The Dark Knight” is jammed with thorny underworld conspiracies and action scenes that teeter madly out of control. At two-and-a-half hours, it's almost too much movie, and its center doesn't always hold. Yet it's a haunting vision of good versus anarchy, with a malicious, careening zest all its own.