This review is a little slow in coming, sorry. I’ve been really busy lately with work and web-enabling my budget spreadsheet and installing Leopard on my Macs. Not as easy as you might think. Macs are a dream to set up for multi-boot; you just have multiple bootable partitions, even on external drives, and the Mac will recognize them and ask at bootup (as long as you hold the Option key while booting). Even so, trying to set up a situation where both Leopard and Tiger (in case Leopard sucks) are available, and totally backed up is a time-consuming process — copying paritions hither and yon and repartitioning drives. The great thing, though, is that I now have my MacBook dual-booting Tiger and Leopard, and TimeMachine is actually keeping my Tiger partition backed up. I don’t know if a full restore would get me back to a true dual-boot, but one can dream, can’t one?
In any case, this is a review of The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale and the late Ledger Heath Ledger. In short, don’t miss this movie. Period.
As per standard in today’s movie-going faire, the old ideals are being brought forth into the 21st century and are being re-made into more gritty and realistic takes on the original IP. If you’re expecting anything like the first Batman movie (the one with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson), think again. This one is, much like Batman Begins, much darker and ominous… and then some.
The title, The Dark Knight, is a play on words, meaning that Gotham City is still in the grips of organized crime, and even more so what with the appearance of the sinister and criminally-genius Joker. However, Batman, as the Dark Knight, is the coming dawn for Gotham’s dark night. Or at least that’s the idea. The new Gotham D.A., played by Aaron Eckhart, is also pledging a new dawn for the city.
I don’t want to get too much into the plot, as there would be spoilers galore. Just suffice it to say, this is a great movie, full of action, character, and fine performances. There is even buzz about an Oscar nod for the late Ledger Heath Ledger. I don’t see it, personally. Sure, it was a great performance, but hardly deserving of such an early decision for The Academy.
In the end, I was a little upset at the ending of the movie. Not that it was poorly done or anything, just that I wasn’t happy with the way things were set up. Bad guys being touted as good, good guys being touted as the villain… that just doesn’t sit right with me. But of course, that’s what sequels are for, right? I do hope that there are many more Batman movies in this milieu, as this style is, to me, what Batman is supposed to be. He’s supposed to be a dark, shadowy figure, instilling fear with a modicum of potential psychosis and uber-violence.
In any case, great movie. See it as soon as possible. And if it’s at an IMAX theater near you, that is recommended.
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[…] « The Knight is Darkest […]
Posted August 5th, 2008 at 2:57 pm manpan Says:
Mike,
Agreed this was a good movie — I had a few problems with it — like a hero being treated as a villain in the end of the movie — and villains being treated as good like you said. There was also the issue of Batman using surveillance equipment to spy on the phone communications of everyone in Gotham City. Lucius Fox an employee of the Wayne Company who assisted Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins also declares he has reservations against the surveillance plan and decides to resign because of it.
I saw the Dark Knight a few weeks back and aside from the issues you brought up and I did it was otherwise a great movie.
Posted August 7th, 2008 at 9:06 pm Michael Swanberg Says:
Agreed. The surveillance angle was a bit of commentary on our gov’t’s recent spying on us. Sometimes it’s necessary… but once the mission is accomplished, the surveillance should end.
I didn’t have too much trouble with Batman using that technology… after all, we know he’ll use it responsibly.
-Mike
Posted August 7th, 2008 at 9:09 pm manpan Says:
I have always been opposed to the surveillance our own government is doing because unless a warrant is issued to wiretap someone’s phone spying on every person unless reasonable cause can be established is just wrong. It seems like in this movie they are trying to legitimize it as an okay thing to do but then again Lucius Fox even like I said and they showed him do decided to resign because of this.
Surveillance is fine if reasonable cause and/or legitimate warrants can be issued. However, the way it has been conducted by the Bush Administration and the National Security Agency it has been operated in an unconstitutional manner and the telecoms who participated did it entirely on a voluntary basis disrespecting their customer’s rights to privacy and failing to notify them in advance of what they were doing.
Nothing gives a President the power to do this in the U.S. Constitution — he has sought to usurp power from the Legislative Branch for the Executive and weaken the Legislative Branch’s ability to hold Administration officials in the Executive Branch responsible for misdeeds. President Bush unfortunately just got in the last month Congress to pass the FISA Amendments Act that legitimizes his unconstitutional surveillance program and provides immunity to telecoms who broke the law in participating in this program. If they were ordered to participate as part of a court order, and/or were presented with a warrant to tap a specific phone it would be alright.
Returning to the Dark Knight like I said besides these issues and the ones you raised it was otherwise a very good movie.
Posted August 9th, 2008 at 1:44 pm Michael Swanberg Says:
Not to get too political, but I don’t 100% agree with you. We are, technically, at war. Wartime does indeed grant a wider array of powers to the executive branch.
OTOH, I don’t find this war to be particularly perilous to Americans as a whole. To be sure, I don’t believe that any terrorist group (or even terrorists as a whole) can seriously threaten our existence or our way of life (at least not if we don’t let them). So, widespread wiretapping and other surveillance definitely seems to be excessive in this instance.
As well, the current bout of surveillance doesn’t seem to have really helped. Although, much of the findings are classified, so we may never know if they have prevented or thwarted any violent acts that were being planned.
Benjamin Franklin once said, “he who would give up liberty for the sake of security deserves neither liberty nor security.” I totally agree… but then, I’m a libertarian at heart.
George Washington once expressed his belief that there should be an armed revolt every 20 years or so. That may be a bit excessive, but it would definitely see to it that the will of the people is being upheld. These days, I fear that big business and big money are far more powerful than the voice of the populace.
I think the surveillance in The Dark Knight was a purposeful statement on the inherent evil in such an endeavor, but also a commentary on how sometimes things are necessary… but once said time has passed, those things should be set aside. There was also a specific need for Batman to do what he did: seeking the Joker. I see this as commentary that there needs to be SPECIFIC need for this type of behavior. As you say, warrants are required. Or at least should be.
-Mike
Posted August 11th, 2008 at 7:53 am
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