"Slaughter is the best medicine..."

By now, I've seen The Dark Knight twice. After the first time, I was ready to declare it the best comic book adaptation of all time. It isn't-- Spiderman 2 still holds that honor. Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight suffers marginally from a convoluted plot and an overlong, misguided final act-- but it is a great film. In scope and stature it reaches farther than the Spiderman films and it's own predecessor; with all it wished to say, it is little surprise that some of the words come out garbled.

I have no interest in discussing plot points, because said plot is fairly complex and contains several double crosses that it took multiple viewings for me to quite catch onto. First and foremost, I want to discuss the cast. What a phenomenal cast. Clearly, as was anticipated, Heath Ledger dominates the film as the Joker. He is spectacular-- this may very well be his best performance, it's fitting this was his final completed film, and he would deserve the posthumous Oscar-nod that's been buzzed about. That's all I'm going to say on the subject since my devotion to Ledger has been documented thoroughly in these very pages. Instead, I'm going to focus on the rest of the cast.

Aaron Eckhart. Oh, Aaron Eckhart. As the only character with any real story arc, he has the most daunting role of the film and he lives up to it spectacularly. His character gets slightly shortchanged by the current edit of the film (I imagine Nolan shot scenes better establishing his relationship with Rachel Dawes, as well as better documentation oh his pre-Two Face temper that were left on the cutting room floor due to time constraints), but he shines through. He's the only character in the film for which we develop any real emotions (unless you come with a pre-existing Batman fetish) and he earns the pay-off.

When it became clear that Maggie Gyllenhaal was replacing Katie Holmes, sure, I was glad-- she's clearly the superior actress, but for most of her screen time she's never given the opportunity to shine. That changes in her last, say, 15 seconds of her performance. Confronted with an event that she can't possibly understand her face becomes a canvas of emotion-- shock, terror, joy, confusion, sadness. She may not get to do much up until that moment, but when she gets to act she doesn't miss the opportunity.

That's actually a common thread throughout the film. Aside from Eckhart and Ledger, no one really gets to do much, except in certain scenes seemingly designed to showcase them. Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman-- all fantastic actors, all in supporting roles-- spend much of the film just adding presence to the mis-en-scene. But Nolan doesn't forget them. Each one eventually gets to do something, and does it well.

The same can't be said for Christian Bale, who gets powerfully overshadowed in his own film. He broods and mopes and mopes and broods. For a Batman film, Bale's Batman seems mighty unnecessary. He seems on the scene just to provide a protagonist for obligatory fight scenes.

And yes, there are obligatory fight scenes. Seperating a fantastic explosion and the climactic showdown between Lt. Gordon and Two-Face, there is an unbearably long battle between Batman and a group of SWATs that could have been avoided completely if Batman had just sent a text message, something he does earlier in the film and could easily have done now. Intercut with this is a long showdown between two ferries which provides suspense, but loses credibility when it concludes in a fit of moralizing as opposed to ending realistically. No one can convince me one of those boats wouldn't be up in flames were a similar situation presented in real life. The film moralizes some more with Lucius Fox's objections to domestic spying technology, but this is a story thread so little used it should have been cut.

Yes, this film is convoluted and overlong. I'll admit that. But it earns the rights to it's flaws because it has a spectacular cast doing spectacular things and, aided by a score that sounds like a siren, builds suspense to the point of seizure. This may be the best film of the summer.