Joker

Rating: 6/10 (10 October 2019)

What kind of Joker is this? The kind that cries on the inside.
This is a Gotham Horror. Director and co-writer Todd Phillips has gone through Martin Scorsese's filmography ranging from Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, Bringing Out the Dead to Shutter Island. Robert De Niro appears as a chat show host just to drive home the Scorsese connections.
The Joker delivers a bravura performance from Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck. He is one of life's losers. Unable to hold down a job as a clown and on seven different kinds of medications but he is still a manic depressive.
Set in the early 1980s, Gotham City is in the sewers and there are sightings of giant rats. Social services funding cuts means that Fleck is on his own. The social worker who does not even listen to him is not going to be there for him any more.
Like Travis Bickle, Fleck snaps and is then reborn as the Joker. The Joker is not political but this nihilistic slow burn drama takes aim at wealthy Democrat and Republican politicians alike.
Thomas Wayne might not be painted as a Trump, but he is a rich tycoon who thinks the 'have nots' are clowns. Watch out for the scene when the moguls dressed in tuxedos are watching a screening of Chaplin's Modern Times. A movie that commented on the desperate conditions many people faced during the 1930s Depression.
Joker is a bold comic strip adaptation but it is a low wattage film with no plot. It is a tribute act because of the Scorsese movies that inspired it.