stolen colours

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I watched The Dark Knight today. Spoilers below:

It was brilliant, but very depressing.

Heath Ledger’s performance lives up to the hype: the Joker steals the screen whenever he appears. Like the magic trick bit where he rams someone’s head into a pencil; or whenever he recounts how he got his scars. And the chilling one-sided dialogue whenever he faces off with Batman. He’s crazy, but he knows his opponents better than they know themselves. Except for the dual ship bombing that never did happen; I was really moved when that grizzled old convict threw the remote out the window.

Christian Bale/Batman is so tortured in this film that it’s difficult to watch. One gripe is that he doesn’t have much screentime at all; but there’s only so much room for personal angsting that the script can accomodate. He loses everything in this movie: his purpose; the grudging acceptance the public had for him; his woman three times over - once to Harvey Dent, once in the letter. “Endure,” says Alfred; but Batman can’t, not right now.

Aaron Eckhart/Harvey Dent - good casting choice as the poster boy who looks a little too slimey. Loved the exchanges between him and Bruce Wayne. I’m not sure what they’re trying to imply by having Two Face die so soon after his creation, but I never believe anyone’s dead till I personally see asystole on the leads. So there.

Maggie Gyllenhal was perfect as Rachel! Makes you wonder why they even bothered getting Katie Holmes in the first film, right? It’s a pity we won’t be seeing any more of her.

Apart from The Joker, the best lines go to the oldies Michael Caine/Alfred and Morgan Freeman/Lucius Fox.

And Singaporean Chin Han as the weasel Lau played his part well. We can also conclude that Lau is a mainland Chinese working in Hongkong because he pleads for his life in Mandarin, not Cantonese.

I missed him, but Cillian Murphy/Scarecrow -was- there! I was watching the credits scroll by and realised, “DANG! I missed him!” On hindsight, that crook with the gorgeous cheekbones whom someone was trying to beat out The Joker’s whereabouts from must have been him.

The movie was rather long. When the Joker escaped from jail, I thought that’d be the end; but it went on for another act. Seeing that the third instalment will not be out for a while, I’m not going to complain about the length of the movie. I wonder which villains they’ll introduce next, because the Joker and Two-Face are the most memorable Batman villains to me. The Penguin? (qiong: NOOOO. DON’T.)