District attorney—and current boyfriend of Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal taking over for Katie Holmes)—Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), is the new star of Gotham City. He joins with Lieutenant Gordon and Batman to take down the mob by targeting their banking. The mob strikes back by unleashing the Joker (Heath Ledger), whose desire for anarchy is not what they intended and throws the city into chaos.
The Dark Knight is an amazing and influential film. It is also one of the most overrated movies in the history of cinema. It’s good. It just isn’t that good. It’s clever, but flawed, and like its predecessor, lets its theme overwhelm its plot. Poor Batman is overwhelmed as well. In Nolan’s first entry, Batman finally got to be the lead in his own picture, standing above the villains, but now that’s over. He’s pale compared to Two-Face; compared to the Joker he’s invisible. I guess being invisible is better than dragging down the film as Rachel does. Even portrayed by a better actress, the character is self-righteous, false, and annoying. Perhaps Nolan doesn’t know how to create a female character. Certainly his films are sausage-fests.
A two hour treatises on the meaning of heroism, The Dark Knight is essentially Harvey Dent’s story, yet Harvey gets less screen time than the Joker and little more than Gordon. For plot and theme, the Joker could be replaced in the story. Even Batman could be written out. Harvey is what matters. In which case, I’d expect to spend a whole lot more time with him. But then this is a movie that adds globe-trotting for the caped crusader simply because it looks cool. I suspect the same reasoning explains the Joker’s dominance over Dent—the Joker is just cooler.
Even with the strange structure, Nolan stepped up his game. The Dark Knight is a complicated, layered movie. And except for an incomprehensible decision at the end (which works for the theme, but is beyond stupid for the story) the myriad plot threats knit together in a satisfying manner.
Of course the Joker rules this film, which is a double edged sword. He easily sweeps in the viewer—well, me anyway. His gags are funny (and wow, does this film need something funny), and his weird, lip-licking, twitching, hunched mannerisms are hypnotic. He’s not a character, but an archetype. He’s the personification of chaos: a big budget Michael Myers. That works great for Batman, except this time we’re supposed to take this all realistically. These are supposed to be real people in a real world. And Ledger doesn’t attempt to grant the Joker any connection to reality. Harvey Dent could be a real man, flawed to start as most men are, and twisted as he is broken. The Joker is just weird. I like weird, but does it fit?
The Dark Knight is a preachy drama masquerading as an action film. In an action film, I should care more about who is hitting whom. And for a drama, I should see fewer men in rubber.