j* movie reviews 2020

The Dark Knight (2008)

Apparently this film has left zero impact on my life.

<<Thanks to COVID19 cancelling new releases, I'll sometimes be revisiting classics or watching films I've never seen on the big screen over the next bit of time.>>

Firstly, lets address the Heath Ledger in the room. I love Heath - I mean in his time he was hundreds of times more potent than all the Hemsworths put together. And everyone raves about him in this. Now maybe it's just Joaquin getting a real go at being the Joker recently, or maybe it's just the up-talk of a celebrity death-cult, but this Joker is so limited on screen. He's good, but it's not a great big juicy role. There are a lot of bit-party characters and they all get a great big slice of the action... or a moderate sized slice so everyone can be slotted in. Heath's joker is good, but he only gets to tell the story of his scars 2.5 times and I was ready to hear it a lot more.

I can't help but find the super-deep voice Bat-talking really hilarious... like a preschooler putting on airs. I love a deep voice, hell, I always say I'd pay for an ebook of Vin Diesel reading tax law. But a deep voice should be a deep voice, not a party trick. No wonder Maggie Gyllenhaal chooses the other rich wanker... how would you be knowing you can never get that deep voice because that's Batman's voice and you've said you'll only do Brucey once Batman is over?

It is a Christopher Nolan film and we know he's the douche-dude who makes films about other douche-dudes. So it is zero surprise there are two female characters who aren't in this just for T&A purposes. Maggie plays the only part you could call relatively major and they blow her up halfway through the movie. It's weird cause she's caught in this ridiculous non-love triangle between these two rich dicks, Batman and the CoinFlipper. I couldn't decide which was the worse choice, but she apparently does and writes it down for Batman/Brucey. This means poor old super long suffering Michael Caine the BatButler has to do some burning of said note. That's right, Batman can do a lot of stuff but his ego is too fragile for another man to get the girl. Oh yeah, the other female character might be missing in your memory because if you blink at the wrong moment you probably miss the cool female detective... she might also die but I'm hazy on the details. Probably blinked or something.

The whole blowing up Maggie Gyllenhaal, which I assume was the mid-point reversal of the film, marks the point where I got really bored and restless. Up until that I was thinking maybe I couldn't dislike the film and would give it three stars. Spoiler alert, if I'm thinking about giving out stars in a film I'm probably not going to love it. I hadn't really bonded with anyone but Maggie, the dudes being so dickish, and the Joker wasn't getting enough airtime. When the dick-vs-dick for Maggie's love became just dick-vs-dick for man-pride and man-standing it was a lot less interesting. And then there's an interesting car-chase and suddenly they plonked a SWAT truck in the river and I was all....

...oh hang on, I've seen this movie before!

And I had. I don't know if it's just the first half of this film is so forgettable, and I wouldn't have been able to tell you the rest of the story from point of the SWAT truck sinking. But after that point everything was pretty familiar, particularly the big ferry-vs-ferry suspenseful non-explosion waiting. CoinFlipper does coin flipping and it's 50% more suspenseful than in the first half of the movie. Batman does non-batty* things. Michael Caine does butlery things. Cops do coppy things. Thugs do thuggy things... except on the ferry where they do hero things.

Then the film ends and I legit don't remember how, and I only saw it last night. I think CoinFlipper dies? Which was probably not surprising cause he was cruising for a half burnt face septic infection the way he was getting around. Talk about a ridiculous cartoon cross-over... that face... that half face... looked like it belonged in the 80s special effect basket on half price.

I didn't go in with any hope, but even with expectations lower than low this failed to surprise me. One star for Maggie and one for Michael Caine.

J* gives it 2 stars.

*Batman does have this one special sonar-phones gizmo and they totally play it down by talking about it as "like a submarine." Like are you kidding me? The one moment you get to acknowledge some level of Bat-juice-inspo and you pass it off on a sub? My biologist-sense was not tingling, it was ropable.