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The Dark Knight (2008)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Time Out rating

Average user rating

189 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Christopher Nolan follows the sombre origin myth of ‘Batman Begins’ with a less introspective, more frenetic sequel. Once again there are lots of ideas on the boil, this time mostly to do with community action and leadership, but an endless flow of bullets, bombs and bat business drowns out most debate. Right from the off, Nolan sidesteps the analyst’s couch and plunges us straight into battle.

He starts with a disorienting bank robbery and from there barely allows us to breathe – or think, even – over the next two and a half hours as we swing from the US to Hong Kong and back to the streets of Gotham. Here, the crime rate is soaring, it’s always night, and any daylight leaves you squinting. It’s always downtown too; the city is inescapable, a confusing mix of the pedestrian and the paranoid.

For this sequel, there’s a whole lot of story going on, which reduced to basics involves the wildly unpredictable Joker (Heath Ledger) wreaking havoc on Gotham. This perverse clown’s keyword is chaos – crime without sense – and there’s more than a nod to the post-9/11 order. ‘Some men just want to watch the world burn,’ chips in one onlooker. Later, when a good guy turns bad and half his face is burnt to reveal bone and sinew, it’s hard not to recall those images of charred bodies in Iraq.

Ledger makes a great, freaky Joker, with dirty, lank hair, a voice that soars and dives, and a tongue that slithers and salivates. Two scenes stick in the mind: him walking away from a doomed hospital in a nurse’s dress right before an explosion, and later hanging out of the window of a speeding car, tasting the air like a reptile, with the soundtrack falling silent in tribute, freezing this psychotic, iconic villain in time and allowing for a moment of sadness amid the noise. If he wins an Oscar, who’d begrudge him that tribute?

Meanwhile, Christian Bale’s stately if unmemorable Bruce Wayne/Batman reassumes relationships with Michael Caine’s affable man-servant Alfred, Morgan Freeman’s man-sage Lucius Fox and Gary Oldman’s modest cop, Lieutenant Gordon (whose quietness is drowned out by the film’s bombastics). New to the scene are District Attorney Harvey Dent (a slick Aaron Eckhart), who Wayne wants to promote as a human alternative to his vigilantism (an interesting sideline on the need for humility and choice when picking a leader), and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a replacement for Katie Holmes’s Rachel Dawes, but she barely gets a look-in.
It’s all very monumental, and the film’s more self-conscious moments, of which there are many, would provoke a giggle if you weren’t distracted by yet another explosion, chase or ratcheting up of a score that shrieks importance.

The challenge that Nolan has set himself is to make a comic book film that’s serious, entertaining and popular. It’s a tall order, but an admirable one. ‘The Dark Knight’ is a film that’s fantastic on the action front, seeds its acrobatics in its own reality, and always feels relevant even when its ideas are drowned out by clatter. That said, every once in a while, you’d like to be able to lean into the screen and tickle somebody’s ribs.

Author: Dave Calhoun 2008-07-22 12:40:41

Time Out London Issue 1979, July 24 - 30, 2008

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User reviews of this film

Mat Wakeham said...

Posted on Jul 24 2008 19:26 How many people can be down on a review of a film they haven't seen? This film, like the first, is admirable but takes itself so seriously that you wonder why there's a guy dressed as a bat in the middle of it all. It's just a blockbuster, a good one, but a blockbuster none the less.

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Chazi said...

Posted on Jul 24 2008 17:36 Not really impressed with this review nd even though i am going to watch Dark Knight on Friday I have seen pretty much every trailer and to be honest, this film deserves oscars. 4 out of 6 is not at all a good rating and therefore should be corrected, yes corrected, to 6 out of 6.

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mary from Inverurie said...

Posted on Jul 24 2008 17:02 Brilliant. Hope Heath does gain an Oscar for his performance. Music good throughout. Kept my attention for 2 1/2 hrs. Now that takes some beating.....

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Steve said...

Posted on Jul 24 2008 16:13 This is the best batman film to-date. Fantastic story, well written, the two and a half hours flew over. Heath ledger is superb. The stunts were great and so many twists in the story. I'm gonna go see it again. excellant.

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Omer said...

Posted on Jul 24 2008 13:12 This time out London review in my eyes is very poor....4 out of 6....really.....i mean REALLY?? Im wathing it tomorrow at IMAX and i dont normally comment before watching but i know this will be so intense, its up there, nay abov the likes of Gladiator....well lets just say TDK will be the nuts at least a 5 out of 6 if not a rare but well deserved 6/6.

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Weicher said...

Posted on Jul 22 2008 15:44 I just read Time Out's review of Spider-Man 2... not a word about "self consciousness" (when it is without a doubt the most self conscious of all of super-hero films)... believe me, there's not worse thing than critics reviewing other critics, and not the film itself. If "The dark knight" weren't as hyped as it is, and if it didn't have so many good reviews, it probably would have got a better review here.

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Weicher said...

Posted on Jul 22 2008 15:30 Well, not a very good review. The question is: does the clatter avoid the message sent by Nolan to be read? I don't think so. It's one of the most intense film I have seen in quite a while. All right, it doesn't have enough humor: Well, who cares? Despite of that, it's very entertaining. And despite having some "self-conscious" moments, they are so well written that I don't even think much about them. On the other hand, how could you say Bale is unmemorable? There is a particular sequence after some very dramatic (and superbly crafted) moment of the film, quiet tragic for Bruce Wayne, in which you can see him sitting on the sofa, looking at the dawn in Gotham City through the windows of his penthouse... Bale achieves to capture so much pain and dissappointment in his face that it makes out for the lack of screen time he spends in the film... in a few words. A much more interesting film than what this guy says. A jewel.

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Abe said...

Posted on Jul 22 2008 14:22 good. very good indeed my litte ones.

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sam said...

Posted on Jul 21 2008 18:07 Goin to see this film on friday and looking forward for it.hopefully it will be as good as the other baman films and cary on the great film that batman is.

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