Category Archives: Films

Critical, Films, Reviews

The Dark Knight in the shadows

*****SPOILER WARNING*****

Let’s just get this out of the way first. The Dark Knight is an awesome film. I dare to say an excellent film. It’s been a long time since I’ve been blown away by a film. A really long time. With all of its awesome-ness, it is not perfect, but it is a great follow up to Batman Begins. The acting was top notch, the story runs deep and twists come with every turn. Sure it could have been trimmed a good 20-30 minutes, but I would rather have an overblown The Dark Knight than no The Dark Knight.

I’m going to assume that many of you all have seen the film already, so I’ll stop reviewing it. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for?

Again, Nolan has brought it with a fearlessness seldom seen in films. Many commentators and fans have been suggesting that Nolan transcended the super hero genre and made it his own. This is no Burton’s Batman. This is Nolan’s. Gritty, down to earth. It feels real. There is no need to suspend our beliefs, convincing us that it is a different super hero movie. Not out of the world “how’d he do that” questioning. Reality.

First and foremost, The Dark Knight is not a super hero film but a full blown crime thriller drama. There are twists and turns in every turn in trying to capture the ultimate villain, the Joker. Take out the vigilante in a crazy costume and put in a regular rogue cop, in the Batman role, it would still work. Batman really took a back seat in the story. This story really isn’t about Batman and who he is, but ultimately the battle of reality. Good vs. Evil. Doing what is right and avoiding the wrong. The shades of gray of reality.

The late Heath Ledger will be missed. He stole the movie, disappearing into the role, owning it. He had become the Joker. There is no Ledger left on the screen. Far from Nicholson’s campy comic Joker of Burton’s touch, Ledger made him dark, frightening, fearless, a pure agent of chaos. Just utterly magnificent and haunting.

Ultimately what worked well in this film is that Batman really took a backseat to the rest of the characters. It is the ultimate battle between good and evil, light and dark. The Joker vs. Harvey Dent. It is a battle of wills to do what is right, fighting evil at every turn, and doing it right, by the rules. And Harvey Dent did it. He did it. He is the White Knight to Batman’s Dark Knight. He was able to clean the streets of Gotham from crime without having to break any rules. But ultimately it is the Joker that wins in the end, breaking the will, the ethics of Harvey Dent by taking away what he cares for most, his love, Rachel Dawes.

How do you defeat a man who has no rules? How can you? You really can’t.

Throughout the film, the Joker always has the advantage over everyone in the film. He plays by no rules, playing the chess game four moves ahead of everyone else. Even Batman was no match for the Joker’s chaos. Batman seemed weak next to the Joker, always playing into the hands of his master plan. Though the Batman breaks rules, a vigilante who takes justice in his own hands, he still plays by the rules. His one rule, to never kill. That held him back. That is what separates him from the Joker and that is what separates him from Gotham’s White Knight. Rules.

Throughout the film, Batman always seemed like a wingless bat, trying to keep afloat in bringing down the Joker. He’s stuck between the lines with nowhere to go, desperate to keep afloat. He has no control over the situations at hand. Even with the help of Commissioner Gordon, he’s a helpless pawn that the Joker plays with at his whim.

Batman is castrated, unable to perform because of his one rule. Sure he’s strong for not breaking it, allowing chaos to continue because he wasn’t willing to break the rule, but it is because of that one rule he’ll never succeed over the Joker. Surprisingly in the cynical times that we live in, it is the goodness of humanity that wins out over the Joker. Simply, they just didn’t push the button and the Joker counted on them to do.

In the scene with Batman on the batpod and the Joker with a rifle, the ultimate clash between the super hero and the super villain, it is Batman that veers away, unable to do what he needed to do to end all of the chaos. He couldn’t kill. The guns on his batpod are good for only shooting obstacles that are in his path and nothing more. They aren’t meant to be shooting down villains.

Later in the interrogation room, Batman violently and physically abuses the Joker trying to get information on where Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent are. What does the Joker do at his threats? He laughs whimsically. It was all a part of his plan and everyone, including Batman, is playing right into it. He never felt threatened in the film. He always had control and never lost it, until the end.

The ultimate villain, unafraid to die, has all the power and the control in the situation. He has nothing to lose.

Somewhere between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, it seems that Batman has been falling in line with the Bush Administration. Sure he’s a vigilante, needing to bend the laws and civil rights to clear crime off the streets, but he has been taking more of a Bush approach in solving the situation.

He would fight crime, bending the rules as a means to an end. The biggest social commentary is that of the ridiculous Sonar device that taps into everyone’s cell phone and creates a tracking system on everyone. It is the whole Patriot Act of the Bush Administration. Sure he justifies it with Lucius Fox not liking the idea and giving his notice if this device is ever put in use and at Wayne Industries, but ultimately the device is put in use and afterward, it was destroyed.

The civil liberties of the Gothamites are breached and thrown away on a whim to do what is right. It is a means to an end.

Batman seems to be doing things as a means to an end. From going to Hong Kong and kidnapping the Mob’s accountant and extraditing him back to Gotham suspending our civil liberties to do what is right. It falls in line with Bush’s approach in the last eight years.

Bush invaded Iraq without any just means but to find WMDS. He bypassed the diplomatic way and just invaded Iraq which resulted in a war with no end in sight. It was a means to an end to get Sadam Hussein. That’s great an all, but there are international laws for a reason. Like Bush, it seems Batman doesn’t have to follow those rules.

The spying and taping our phones, emails, our private contents hoping to find more terrorists residing in the United States, Bush passed the Patriot Act. The reason for it is great, to weed out the bad guys and protect the nation, but it is done by jeopardizing our freedoms. Batman with his little sonar device did that.

A means to an end. Does that justify breaking laws? It seems to Batman it does. I guess being the millionaire playboy that he is; he should fall in line with the Republican ideals.

Sure in the end, he destroyed the sonar thing, but it shouldn’t have been used in the first place.

After all is said and done, the Joker captured, Two-Face (the fallen White Knight, his good side and bad side divided) is dead, the Batman runs.

He’s not a hero as he proclaims. Harvey Dent was a hero. Batman is who Gotham needs to be at that time.

Like the government and those in position of power, Commissioner Gordon and Batman create lies to maintain the status quo; to keep us citizens in line. It is a empty facade so we have something to strive for. Batman is not a hero. He’s the one that must do what is needed and pay the consequence for it. Why? Because he’s strong; stronger than most. He’s a man alone in the world with nothing to lose but everything to care for.

He is The Dark Knight

So he’ll be in the shadows, fighting crimes in his own way, by his own rules.

Films, Reviews

Tonight He Comes: Hancock

This is the much needed SPOILER WARNING. This review contains SPOILERS.

Hancock is Will Smith’s latest venture into darker more mature material. Directed by Peter Berg, Hancock tells the story of a reluctant hero, Smith, who is a bitter alcoholic with anger management issues. Because of his isolation and the public outcry against his “super hero” antics, which causes more damage than actual “saving”, Hancock never connects with anyone or feels that he belongs in this world.

He’s lost in this large impersonal city of Los Angeles; a reluctant superhero, not because he wants to be, because he has powers of one. His life changes as he saves a PR guy, Ray, played by Jason Bateman. With his infectious idealism and honest heart, he transforms Hancock into the true superhero that he always had potential to become.

Overall, Berg crafts a great tale on how Hancock fights his demons and comes to be the Hero. It is a dark satire on the whole superhero genre, poking fun at certain aspects left and right. Smith does a great job in portraying the asshole superhero that he needed to be to show the arc that Hancock went through in the film.

Hancock is exactly the type of superhero movie that I love. He’s not battling an arch-villain or an exterior force that threatens humanity. No. Hancock is battling himself. He’s fighting an interior battle; his personal demons. When you have an immortal superhero, no exterior force can defeat him, so why even bother. Only he can defeat himself and when we first meet Hancock on a bus bench, sleeping off a hangover, he’s already at the bottom, broken and defeated.

Berg handles the transformation that Hancock goes through perfectly. It was actually pretty good up to the last third of the film when Charlize Theron’s character, Mary Embry, throws Hancock out of the kitchen walls and into the streets. Those of us who can put two and two together and see the glimpses of another super hero from the trailers should have seen that coming a mile away. With that knowledge, I was expecting Berg to take the film to the next level, but unfortunately he dropped the ball.

Actually, it wasn’t him that dropped the ball. It was the script. It just fell apart. There’s no excuse for it, and with where they are going to take it, there’s no way around it. The tone suddenly changes from the light tone of poking fun at the super hero genre to a serious melodrama.

Some might be expecting the revelation of another super human will give Hancock a super-villain to fight, but it doesn’t. It just ends up being a melodramatic couples fight with shoddy exposition; the exposition of Hancock’s origin. Instead of leaving Hancock’s past and origin with a simple “I don’t know” it goes the route of explaining who Mary and Hancock are and it’s utterly ridiculous.

These two super humans are immortals left on earth by the Gods, the Olympians, which once looked over earth. It just happened that they are the only two left in the world. Their history together, as a loving couple, dates back literally to forever ago. They are a pair, created to be with each other throughout time.

They only separated out of love for each other, because of the mandatory kryptonite factor. Once these two super humans are together, they become mortal and eventually they’ll die together. Out of love. Love makes us mortal. Without it, we are only self-righteous Gods.

Tragic, these two lifelong lovers are torn apart so they can survive.

Luckily for Hancock, he has no memory of ever being with Mary, so it is easier for them to part. It’s not the life ending be all end all that great loves should be, because they aren’t in love at all. They are just two super humans that exist. Their history thrown away like the last third of the film.

Maybe I’ve gone in watching the film with low expectations because of the bad word-of-mouth spreading like a wild SoCal fire, but I came out enjoying it for the most part. It was damn near great when it was the joking, mocking, self discovery of a reluctant hero growing up, fighting his demons and becoming the super hero that he was meant to be. But ultimately, all greatness comes to an end, and it involves a woman.