The Dark Knight
Well, I went and saw the Dark Knight last night -possibly the last person in the world to see it, and my reaction… an overwhelming ‘meh’.
Sure, Heath Ledger is ok as the Joker (but not, in my opinion, worthy of an oscar -there have been better supporting roles this year, and everyone’s getting silly about it because he’s dead -let’s have some objectivity people!), and Christian Bale is up there in my list of favourite actors but jesus, his ‘Batman Voice’ is just so irritating! The throaty, raspy way he talks when that cowl is on is just too much for me. Maggie Gyllanhall does ok as a Katie Holmes replacement (and looks remarkably like her), but it never sits well when they change actors like that, and I’m glad to see the back of her. Aaron Eckhart did ok as Dent, but was restricted by the script, and so did his best. Stand out for me among the cast (aside from Michael Caine who’s just a legend) was Gary Oldman… yes, he’s usually a villan, but he really brings something I like to the role of Commissioner Gordon.
So, onto the story… well, I enjoyed Batman Begins, but once again a franchise is let down by a poor sequel -I take the Nolan films as a new franchise. It just seems that they tried a little bit too hard to do the ‘gritty’ thing. It worked for 007 in Casino Royale, and to a certain extent in Batman Begins, but it’s now getting formulaic and frankly boring. It tries to meander around chaos theory, and human psycology, but just seems to fall a little flat.
Not bad as such, but not brilliant by any stretch of the imagination. A good popcorn film.