J and I went to see The Dark Knight last night and got a big dose of Kids Behaving Badly. Despite that, I rather enjoyed the movie. J said he didn’t “enjoy” it, but it was well-made. I think we all know the plot by now, so let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.

THE GOOD: It was like watching a graphic novel up on the screen. No talking down to the audience, no melodramatic little vignettes designed to appeal to a particular movie-going demographic (well, except at the end). I found the movie surprisingly intellectual and a worthy — if not better — successor to Batman Begins. Heath Ledger was very good as the Joker, as streets ahead of Nicholson’s Joker as that movie was ahead of the old Adam West series. I’m sorry I won’t be seeing him again in future Batman movies. I also appreciated William Fichtner as the Bank Manager; I thought he rocked.

THE BAD: Did the director only just discover the circle-around-all-actors-and-make-the-moviegoer-dizzy camera technique? ‘Cos they overused that one, in my opinion. And then a scene where the Batman, yet again, launched himself off the top of the skyscraper and I thought to myself, “Kerr-ist, couldn’t he have just used the freakin’ elevator?”

Alfred. At one point, I kept thinking to myself, is this movie about the Batman, or is it “Batman & Alfred”? There is a fine line between being a support to the hero and driving his agenda and I really think Alfred crossed that line in this movie.

Harvey Dent. He was a “meh” character for me, until he turned into Two-Face. Until then, the “chiselled, American hero” character (as Wikipedia described him), with his trite reasoning for the Batman’s existence in the fight for good-versus-evil (maybe because of his reasoning?), did absolutely nothing for me. It could be that I was subconsciously influenced by an article I read that The Dark Knight was a metaphor for explaining/celebrating Bush and his War on Terror. While I disagree with that assessment (it’s about a terror world, but not about glorifying Bush, imo) after seeing the movie (as with all good fiction, the movie itself is much more subtle than our news outlets would make the world out to be), I can’t be sure it didn’t taint my reading of Dent.

Christian Bale. There’s something about the way he talks that I find interferes with my empathy for Bruce Wayne. (The same way I get fixated on Tom Cruise’s nose, Goldie Hawn’s hands and Andie McDowell’s upper lip. What can I say, I’m shallow like that.) I remain impressed by Michael Keaton’s portrayal above all others, even though I was — I’ll admit it — initially aghast at the casting choice.

The ending. There was really no need to use Batman as the fall guy instead of Harvey. It was a cop-out, both of Harvey and of the Batman. Why not say that the Joker drove Harvey mad and he was temporarily insane when he killed those people? Why not blame one of Joker’s minions, if you must lie? And the Batman will give up his entire reputation — past, present, and future — to safeguard someone else’s dead reputation? Considering the people of Gotham (both average and criminal) had already demonstrated what spine they had on the ferries, I found the reasoning patronising. And those dogs chasing after the Batman in the end, with the voiceover … what a dreadful and unnecessary end to an otherwise good and solid movie.

THE UGLY: The kids in the movie theatre with us. Believe it or not, The Dark Knight was classified “U” for Universal audiences, and we had several noisy 6 year old’s surrounding us, one even taking phone calls on his mobile until (so J tells me) I shouted at him to be quiet. (I’m sure I only used a moderate tone designed to momentarily carry over the sound coming from the movie screen. Ahem.)

So, bearing this in mind, it could be that a niggle was explained, but I missed it. Which was, why did Alfred burn the letter from Rachel? Surely it would’ve provided Bruce Wayne with some closure? And don’t you love the way computers work in Movielandia? “Just type in your name”. Not “Type in your name, in the order of first name, followed by family name, in mixed-case, space delimited”. Gods, I wish we all worked with software like that.

FAVOURITE ACTOR: Always, whatever I see him in (if I can recognise him behind the character), Gary Oldman.

THE SCORE: 9 out of 10. I’m definitely getting this one on DVD as well!