If this was dinner, I'd get indigestion

Rating: 5/10 (14 August 2008)

This review is influenced by hunger. I didn't make the time to properly eat before watching this film. That meant sitting for 152 minutes feeling hungry. Warning: this review contains food metaphors.
A great director is like a great chef. Great chef's understand how to balance a menu and keep your tastebuds dancing through your meal. Great director's understand how to balance a great film, they know how to keep an audience hanging on every scene, line and twist on the screen. The senses work in harmony with anticipation. It's all about knowing what to add in and what to leave out. It's also all about mixing your ingredients, making all the elements work together to create an experience for your customer.
A sandwich and a glass of juice can be just as enjoyable as a 7 course tasting menu, a straightforward revenge film can be just as exciting as a blockbuster trilogy. It all comes down to the balance of ingredients and the way they are put together. As with any film or meal I watch or eat I try not to decide before experiencing it.
The proof is always in the pudding. First impressions count. The opening scene was promising, this was a neat little appetiser. As bank job scenes go, this was one of the better efforts. My first thought was that to make a villain more dangerous, show them in stark daylight  not dark shadows. It was a pleasant surprise to see The Joker in bright light. For some reason Batman has to be 'dark' - I appreciate that the original comics were 'dark', but I can't help thinking that a really brave director would play with that. Whenever the Joker was placed in harsh daylight that made him much more haunting than scuttling around in shadows.
It was impossible not to watch the film without analysing Ledger's performance in a deeper way. His death was a tragedy and quite obviously added a macabre twist of reality to the film which the studio chose to run with. Some may feel uncomfortable with that, I don't. I'm sure if he were alive Ledger would want it that way and I am also sure he would welcome honest opinions of his performance. There has been talk that he should be nominated for an Oscar, to me rather than respecting him in death it actually belittles him. After the film I asked myself whether his performance merited an Oscar nomination; to me it didn't. It was obviously a great role to play and he played it excellently, but if that proves to be Oscar worthy, then I will find it hard to respect the Oscars as a standard of film excellence. What am I comparing against? Last years screen villain Javier Bardem. He set the bar for deranged psychopath. I asked myself; who would I not want to be in trouble with? Anton Chigurh every time.
After Ledger it was a case of 'the rest of the film'. To me it was a let-down. The constant loud music and sound effects drowned out the mumbling of the actors. It was hard to follow what was going on and that may be the reason why I left wondering what the actual story was. There seemed to be too much going on, as if sticking to one clear plot line was a risk. As with the last film Michael Caine stole the best lines, Morgan Freeman also had his moments. Sadly Christian Bale seemed to sleepwalk through the film. I may be the only person in the known universe who thinks he was more wooden than a Welsh dresser. This was a big shame for me as I believe he's got what it takes to be a screen legend. Maybe it was the way he was directed, or the script?
There were some clear absurdities running through the film. I can suspend disbelief enough to live with a caped billionaire flying around buildings and I can even let them get away with not putting a bullet into the Joker after about 15 minutes of the film. What I can't get is how Rachel Dawes was supposed to be 'really beautiful'. I'm sure Maggie Gyllenhaal is a lovely lady, but just as I'm not really handsome, she's not really beautiful. This had me confused. On top of all the other confusions that was where I lost the plot.
If this film was dinner it would be a huge one course bowl with the tasty appetiser buried at the bottom. There would be nothing but rich fatty meats, chili's and heavy fish and egg sauces piled as high as possible and then covered with more sauces. Some beer would also be hoyed in and maybe some more sauce. There would be no rice, no veg and definitely no Brussels sprouts (not such a bad thing) It was as though nothing was allowed to breathe, there was just a relentless assault of set pieces and noise all resulting in a tasteless mess. Obviously a dish like that is going to be popular with some, I totally understand that, but I'm looking for something else.
With the ingredients available I was disappointed with this film. With a more direct plot and story, breathing space and pacing (was there any?) this could have been so much better. Nolan obviously has talent, but I was left feeling as though he is much smarter than the film he has just released. Was he under pressure to tick studio boxes, has he lost sight of the trees? If he gets another crack at this franchise I hope that he strips away the extraneous mess and delivers a more direct, better balanced Batman which is worthy of a top 3 IMDb ranking.