Netflixed: The Dark Knight

“The Dark Knight (Two-Disc Special Edition + Digital Copy)” (Warner Home Video)

Liked this blockbuster less than I had hoped.

Batman (Christian Bale) teams with Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to continue dismantling Gotham City’s criminal organizations in this sequel to Batman Begins. But a psychotic new villain known as the Joker (Heath Ledger, in a Golden Globe-nominated role) threatens to undo all their good work. The star-studded cast includes Maggie Gyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman, Anthony Michael Hall, Michael Caine and Eric Roberts. [Netflix: The Dark Knight]

Sort of boring, actually. I may be an art-house film snob, but I still appreciate big Hollywood spectacular films, if they are done well. This edition of the Batman series was snoozey, and not very compelling.

Actually, the most fun part was playing GWC¹ for various Chicago locations. I didn’t see me on the roof in the helicopter scene², but several scenes were filmed five or ten minutes away from us, pretty much every one with an El track visible in fact. I’ve seen worse movies, don’t get me wrong, but there’s no fracking way The Dark Knight deserves its current ranking of #5 on IMDb’s 250 greatest films of all time. Despite all the hype generated about Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker, I was underwhelmed by that as well.

Footnotes:

1. Guess Where Chicago [↩]
2. we happened to be drinking cocktails on our roof deck one evening while several helicopters whirred by for a few hours [↩]