The Dark Knight

Christian Bale’s second Batman film, following Batman Begins

It was a brave film to make, given the Tim Burton treatment of the Batman V Joker story had been s well done with Jack Nicholson’s excellent portrayal of one of the maddest villains in comic book history.  Nicholson’s Joker was a disfigured man, embittered by Batman and eager for vengeance at any cost, though not averse to having fun while he prepared his traps.

Ledger’s portrayal is rather different – he is an unknown man who clearly doesn’t give a damn about anything. He cheerfully kills his own men, blows up hospitals and ruins lives and seems unstoppable. He is more of a terrorist than a criminal.

The film begins with a bank heist led by a team of men in clown masks, but each is led by one man to believe that their leader (who each thinks has not turned up), plans to kill them off after the job is over, and the men do start taking each other’s lives. The survivor unmasks to show that he has a permanent facemask on underneath. He is the joker. Unlike Nicholson’s character, we have no origin story here (Nicholson having been disfigured by a fall into a vat of chemical gunge).

The new Joker is actually after mob money, to make an impression on the gangsters of Gotham City who are nervously trying to move their funds out of town. The Batman, whose presence has seriously disrupted their activities, frightens them. The Joker wants to prove that he has what it takes to assassinate the Batman.

Batman himself is facing a crisis, in that many people are trying to copy him and getting themselves into a lot of trouble trying to take on professional crooks themselves. He also has some rivalry from a hotshot D.A Harvey Dent (the name alone being very familiar to Batman fans). Dent is achieving similar results to Batman in curbing crime, but legally. Worse, Bruce Wayne’s former girlfriend, Maggie Gylenhaal. Is now in love with Dent. 

As the Joker starts to assassinate anyone who has made a successful stand against crime, the mayor, Dent and many others become targets. Gordon appears to get killed in one attack, and Batman resorts to increasingly extreme measures to counter-attack the Joker. He sets an elaborate trap, using Dent as bait and after a chase using the Tumbler Batmobile and once that is wrecked, an escape pod big wheeled motor-bike, Batman is finally brought face to face with the Joker, though it is the not dead at all Gordon 9soon to be promoted to Commissioner) who manages to save the day and capture the psychopath.

Batman goes after the Joker, and taps into every mobile phone in Gotham through Lucius Fox’s (Morgan Freeman) technologies, a move so unethical that Fox will resign over it.

There is an elaborate trap set up by the Joker in which two river ferries have bombs planted on board and passengers given an option to use a detonator and blow up the other ferry to save themselves. If they don’t act before midnight, the Joker plans to destroy both boats anyway.  Though they come close to killing the other crews, both sets of passengers do the right thing – one boat, a struggle to have control of the detonator ends with the man most eager for it taking it and simply throwing it overboard.  Batman stops the Joker before he is able to blow up the boats anyway.

The final moments for the Joker, and in effect, for Ledger, are ambiguously filmed. He is last seen hanging precariously from a high building on cables as the police close in for his arrest, and as batman runs off to deal with the Two-Face hostage crisis.  We do not know if the Joker will fall, get shot or escape. He is just there, laughing. This may have been done purposely to give the character and actor an outlet to legend. It would clearly be a mistake to bring The Joker back played by another actor after such a swan song tower-house performance.

Dent’s fate is more certain. Batman kills him and offers to take the blame for the deaths he cause, becoming a fugitive despite Gordon’s wishes to the contrary. Batman-Wayne recognises that the world has more need of good lawyers than caped crusading vigilantes. The final shots of Batman are of him being chased into the night by the police and their dogs as Fox leaves his office for the last time, and Alfred (played beautifully by Michael Caine) tears up an intimate letter to Bruce Wayne from Dent’s girlfriend. From the darkness and violence, the film ends in sorrow and tragedy. It is a great film, well acted all round, though it will always now be rightly seen as Ledger’s film.