A Knight to Remember
So I checked out The Dark Knight on Friday and was (gratefully) impressed by what the latest Batman flick had to offer. Even more so than Batman Begins (2005), the tone of TDK is, well, quite dark. Christian Bale, hands down the definitive on-screen Batman in my opinion, returns as the Caped Crusader, beefy, convincing and quietly charismatic as ever in a complex role. Unfortunately—to the disappointment of gay men and straight women everywhere–there aren’t any scenes of the studly actor walking around shirtless for extended periods of time; there is one scene at the beginning of the film, but it’s more a glimpse of his battered and bruised back. I guess to ask for a scene of him getting out of the shower and toweling off for a couple of minutes wouldn’t have exactly moved the storyline along…oh well, I’ll just have to keep that fantasy alive in the theater of my imagination.
The rest of the cast is just as impressive: Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, and pretty much the lone female in the movie, Maggie Gyllenhaal (taking over the role of Rachel Dawes that Katie Holmes created in Batman Begins).
And then there’s Heath Ledger, whose performance as the maniacal, psychotic and just plain deranged Joker is an intensely creepy sight to behold and completely worthy of the early Oscar buzz it’s been generating. I love the fact that the audience isn’t really given a back story as to how the Joker became who he is, just that he is who he is and sort of just appeared out of nowhere to wreak havoc on Gotham City. Ledger commands the screen in every scene that he appears, and the audience quickly realizes that wherever the Joker is, violence and destruction is not far off. It’s a great and mesmerizing performance by a gifted actor.
The boxoffice projections for the $180 million movie are anything but dark. Estimates for Friday alone have The Dark Knight grossing a record breaking $66.4 million. The current record holder for a single day gross is (the vastly inferior) Spider Man 3, which back in 2007 took in $59.8 million in its first day.
Looking ahead at August releases, The Dark Knight appears to be the last of the big summer blockbuster films; clearly a case of saving the best until last.
Cheerio!
S.R.
