...the psychological twists in The Dark Knightespecially the transformation of Dent into Two-Faceare baffling as drama. They play as if theyd been penned by Oxford philosophy majors trying to tone up a piece of American popto turn it into an uncivil Shavian dialogue, Don Juan in Hell with mutilations and truck crashes.
Oh, the verbiage probably wouldnt matter if those truck crashes were any fun, but the tumult is spectacularly incoherent. Nolan appears to have no clue how to stage or shoot action. He got away with the chopped-up fights in Batman Begins because his hero was a barely glimpsed ninja, coming at villains from all angles in stroboscopic flashes. There are more variables here, which means more opportunities to say What the f--- just happened? I defy you to make spatial sense of the early scene in which Batman battles faux Batmen, gangsters, and the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy in a cameo that comes to nothing). If you can, move on to Level 2, diagramming the Bat-tank versus Joker-truck versus cop car chase. Then, finally, take the Ultimate Challenge: following the climax with Batman, the Joker, more faux Batmen, decoy hostages dressed as clowns, a SWAT team, and Morgan Freemans Lucius with some kind of sonar monitoring gizmo that tracks all the parties on video screens. Actually, Freeman looks like he knows whats going on. Maybe the sequence plays well in sonar.
I saw it in Imax, and let me tell you, on that colossal screen, those skyscraper bat-plunges (in Gotham and Hong Kong) are something to seeand feel. If they rigged up that Disney World thing where your seats tilt in sync with the camera, theyd have to keep out pregnant women and people with fear of heights. The momentum doesnt carry through, though. The Dark Knight is all fits and startsfitfully suspenseful, fitfully scary, one jerky episode after another with jolts of brutality to keep you revved up. When Burtons Batman came out, some prominent critics griped that the film was too violent for kids. Waitll they get a load of this.