The Dark Knight

On the other hand, The Dark Knight, which Jana and I saw on a rare child-less evening recently, was freaking awesome. Yeah yeah, the movie's been out forever, but those of you with more than one little one know how hard it is to get out.

Let's get this out of the way now: Heath Ledger is going to win an Oscar posthumously. Forget all the drama surrounding his unfortunate premature death. His performance was amazing, a masterful portrayal of a brilliant madman. What Jana and I found especially interesting are his multiple accounts of how he got his facial scars — anyone have theories on what that was about?

Beyond the expected crime caper fare, the movie got at current political issues. When the Joker demands Batman reveal his identity or he will keep killing innocent people, the comment is made that he shouldn't give in to the whims of a madman. Sort of like we can't give into the terrorists, so we keep fighting and hoping to inspire people while death and destruction continues to happen around us ... or something like that. On the way home I said to Jana that I bet upon seeing the movie, Dick Cheney would think "I'm Batman!"

My main criticism was that the whole Harvey Dent transformation into Two-Face hinged on the understanding that Rachel Dawes was the absolute love of his life and he couldn't live without her. Never bought that, they seemed like a couple that had been dating for a few weeks. So when she dies, yeah, he would be bummed, but would that turn him from a good guy into a criminal mastermind? It's a stretch, sort of like the stretch that Anakin Skywalker would turn to the dark side and eventually become Darth Vader because he had a dream that Padme would die — not buying it, the love connection was never convincingly built.

As a kid, I used to watch the old Batman TV shows in syndication on Channel 18, and it was great campy fun. I always enjoyed how the criminals would capture Batman, then leave an obvious flaw in their plot to kill him. The opposite was the case in this movie, where the Joker was allowed to escape from jail because of incredibly inept police work.

Dark Knight is about as far from campy fun as you can get. It was 2-1/2 intense hours in the theater. But it was well worth it.