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The Dark Knight
Film Review by Kam Williams
The Joker and Batman Match Wits and Muscle in Heath Ledger’s Swan
Song
You heard it here first: the late Heath Ledger will win an
Academy Award for his defining, spine-tingling performance as The Joker.
Forget Cesar Romero’s hamming it up on the campy Sixties TV series.
Ditto, Jack Nicholson’s equally-over the top rendition in the first
screen adaptation of Batman back in 1989.
Ledger easily eclipses each of his predecessors via an inspired
interpretation of the character as a maniacal misanthrope much more
menacing than mirthful. Not that he doesn’t also have a full complement
of laugh-inducing lines like “Whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you
stranger,” “I love this job,” and “You know, you remind me of my father.
I hated my father.” Still, what makes this incarnation of The Joker
unforgettable is that under that garish clown makeup is a philosophical
and downright scary psychopath with mayhem at the top of his agenda.
The accolades for The Dark Knight don’t stop with Ledger, as the
picture itself happens to be not only the best blockbuster of the
summer, but perhaps the best comic book adaptation ever brought to the
big screen. And although it’s awfully early to be talking Oscar buzz,
nominations also ought to be in order for director Christopher Nolan
(Memento) and for oft-overlooked Christian Bale who delivers
again as The Caped Crusader.
As for the plot, at the point of departure, we find Gotham winning
its battle against the underworld, thanks in no small part to the
efforts of Batman. Everything changes the day The Joker shows up in town
and pulls off a brazen bank robbery of a fortune of laundered mob money
during which he strategically knocks-off each of his accomplices at the
moment he no longer needs their services.
Next, the double-crossing clown approaches the city’s loose
confederation of crime bosses and offers, for a price, to kill the
vigilante on the brink of shutting down their embattled syndicate. They
reluctantly agree, which means Batman must match wits as much as muscle
with this most-worthy adversary.
Fortunately, his alter ego, billionaire Bruce Wayne, with the help of
his loyal butler, Alfred (Michael Caine) and genius inventor
Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), is capable of outfitting himself
with a new line of state-of-the-art Bat gadgetry, including a Batmobile,
a Batsuit, a Batpod, Batdarts, Batsonar, and so forth.
Yet, despite all the bells and whistles and eye-popping special f/x, The
Dark Knight is fated to be remembered unavoidably as Heath Ledger’s
chilling swan song. At least he saved his best performance for last.
Rated PG-13 for menacing and for intense violence.
Running time: 152 minutes
Studio: Warner Brothers
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Lloyd Kam Williams
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 Lloyd
Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who
writes for 100+ publications around the U.S. and Canada. He is a member of
the African-American Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics
Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee, and Rotten Tomatoes. In
addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from
Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam
lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.
IMDiversity.com is committed to presenting diverse points of view.
However, the viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of
the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or
employees at IMD.
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