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topazShort review:
Heath Ledger was the one we've been waiting for.
The movie was lots of fun. What I wasn't quite expecting was that the movie isn't really about the Batman and the Joker. It's about the Batman and Harvey Dent. Early in the movie Dent comments, on the subject of the Batman and his questionable tactics, "You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." Throughout the movie we get lots of hints about how Harvey Dent is positioned as the mirror opposite of Batman: Jim Gordon mentions that people call him "the white knight", and at a press conference about Gotham's war on crime Dent says, "The dawn is coming." (Contrast that with the movie's advertising tagline, "The Storm is Coming".) But we have no idea just how important and poignant that comment will be until seeing Dent's transformation into Two-Face, and the viciously logical conclusion that Batman draws from it. It's fascinating and really a lot more complex than I expected even from this crowd.
That said:
The story was a mess. Sorry, but it was. There was a really splendid two-hour movie trying to get out of this. I still enjoyed the movie a lot, but I spent too much time in the third act being confused about which fiendish Joker plot Batman was trying to foil, and how Jim Gordon and Lucius Fox and Rachel Dawes and Lao and the scuzzy Russian mobster and and and everyone else fit into it. As incredibly delicious as Heath Ledger was, I think that the movie would have benefited a lot from cutting down the middle hour a lot in order to move Harvey Dent's story forward.
Oh, and don't bring the kids to this one. Holy smokes.
Heath Ledger was the one we've been waiting for.
The movie was lots of fun. What I wasn't quite expecting was that the movie isn't really about the Batman and the Joker. It's about the Batman and Harvey Dent. Early in the movie Dent comments, on the subject of the Batman and his questionable tactics, "You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." Throughout the movie we get lots of hints about how Harvey Dent is positioned as the mirror opposite of Batman: Jim Gordon mentions that people call him "the white knight", and at a press conference about Gotham's war on crime Dent says, "The dawn is coming." (Contrast that with the movie's advertising tagline, "The Storm is Coming".) But we have no idea just how important and poignant that comment will be until seeing Dent's transformation into Two-Face, and the viciously logical conclusion that Batman draws from it. It's fascinating and really a lot more complex than I expected even from this crowd.
That said:
The story was a mess. Sorry, but it was. There was a really splendid two-hour movie trying to get out of this. I still enjoyed the movie a lot, but I spent too much time in the third act being confused about which fiendish Joker plot Batman was trying to foil, and how Jim Gordon and Lucius Fox and Rachel Dawes and Lao and the scuzzy Russian mobster and and and everyone else fit into it. As incredibly delicious as Heath Ledger was, I think that the movie would have benefited a lot from cutting down the middle hour a lot in order to move Harvey Dent's story forward.
Oh, and don't bring the kids to this one. Holy smokes.
Batman
Date: 2008-08-26 02:05 am (UTC)