Spectacular action film with many tremendous sequences and a thumping score. It felt a bit bloated at times and went on and on, but the performances are excellent and there is much to admire. Christian Bale got to act in his first outing as batsman but here things revert more to type with the support characters stealing the show: Maggie Gyllenhaul plugs the Katie Holmes talent hole from the first movie, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine do their thing, Gary Oldman is excellent as the honest Gordon (hard to do those unshowy roles but Oldman rises to the challenge), Aaron Eckhardt is very good as Harvey Dent, in many ways equal protagonist to Batman, and Heath Ledger is superb as the Joker.
I’m not just saying the last bit because he’s dead; Ledger’s is a unique performance – he couldn’t rely on his bigness like Nicholson, Ledger’s more a brooding actor, but he is big and weird with this amazing voice. It’s really, really good work.
Thinking on it, this is very much a post Sept 11 action film – it deals with the problems of terrorism, the moral issues in how to respond, the importance of media manipulation, innocent people die, the tone is dark. One thing I would point out – for all the angsting that goes on in this film, the act by our heroes that seems to cause most damage is when Oldman and Batman don’t simply kill the Joker when they have the chance.
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