The Movie We Deserve...

Rating: 10/10 (19 July 2008)

*******MILD SPOILERS AHEAD, BUT PLEASE READ AFTER YOU SEE THE MOVIE!******
I'm nearly speechless, though not because I can't talk, but because I was so stunned by the content of this movie that I can't figure out where to start. It's a great super-hero movie, to be sure, but it's also your anger and my anger cleverly incorporated into a hugely entertaining, and strangely contemplative action movie. The movies' ambivalence is our ambivalence. We've become complacent and smug after September 11th... wanting to return to our comfortable American Way of Life as soon as possible... and we have. A friend of mine posted on his "Facebook Update" (ask a friend if you don't know what that is - chances are you have one on Facebook) this; "___ ______ would like to ask Christopher Nolan - WHY SO SERIOUS??" I want to ask my friend, and most likely will ask, exactly what ROCK he's been living under for the last seven years??!! The grim nature of the movie didn't come as a surprise to me. For any of you News Junkies, or avid Politicos out there - you will find SO much in current history in this movie, and can treat it as a sort of Trivial Pursuit of The Bush Administration. Where is the reference to Abu Grahib; The second term of the "President" the people - who voted him back into office, that is - "Deserve"; The topsy-turvey hunt for a figure of terror who manipulates our every move to capture him; the death of innocent people we love; the bewilderment, and helplessness we feel at how out of control things seem to have become?
You have more reviews to read that are more informative than my little rant, and, really - you should get off your computer and see this movie, but I save The Best for Last: The Great Heath Ledger. He is the throbbing, twisted, neurotic, genius-gone-wrong, core of the movie. It is a performance as creepy, disturbing, kind of fabulous, and ultimately as Iconic as Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lechter (certainly as blackly humorous). That Mr Ledger will not feature in an obvious "Origin-of the-Joker" sequel is, for me, okay. There are some performances, just as there are some questions, that are better left to our imagination. See the movie as an act of defiance aimed at Conservative idiot John Gibsons' MOCKING of Heath Ledgers death - not more than an hour after it occurred - on his radio show. (Look it up on You Tube - truly sick). See it as an homage to an actor who was, by all accounts, are pretty decent all around human being. See it just because you want to be entertained, but see it, and in the immortal words of Hannibal Lechter - "GO NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"