Great filmmaking, but loses me with endorsement of authoritarianism and Harvey Dent as 'Two-Face'

Rating: 8/10 (15 August 2017)

Ah, 2008... Those were innocent times. In 2008, you could have a main character in a movie talk about how great authoritarianism can be, and not completely split the room, politically.
You know what I'm talking about – the dinner scene between Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne, and Dent waxes philosophical about what it means to be a hero; to "do your duty" – how the Romans would "suspend democracy" and appoint one man to watch over the city in times of crisis.
Yeah...
Different world we're living in a decade later. I won't name names, but let's just say some people have called our own president an autocrat and authoritarian who behaves like a billionaire playboy, wants to run the country as a business, and receives twice-daily 'flattery reports' on how great he is. Hero at the gates, indeed. Hail Caesar.
I've seen TDK probably five times now. This last time was with my 12 year old son. He loved it – a little boring in places, sure, lots of talking and set-up in the first half of the long film - like that scene with Bruce getting all dewy over Dent at the dinner table – but the 'batman moments' are great. Dark, gritty, exciting. My favorite is the chase scene through downtown Gotham. "Take lower fifth." "Lower fifth?! We'll be like turkeys on Thanksgiving down there" There are lots of reviews for TDK – nearly 5,000 – but I haven't seen one praising Nicky Katt as the mouthy, freaked-out guard transporting Harvey Dent across the city.
What an epic sequence. The directorial choices of suspending the score for most of it, the scope of the action, the perfect pacing of it – these are a testament to Nolan.
Anyway.
Of course there are things that are silly about the film. But you take these with a grain of salt – you suspend disbelief. It's 'realistic,' but really only among the pantheon of superhero films. It's as realistic as Johnathan Hensleigh's The Punisher, anyway – where even though the main character has no supernatural powers, and his motivation for being a vigilante seems psychologically plausible, and he uses the resources available to him to augment his revenge, there's still a giant man in a sailor shirt and the super-hot model / truck stop waitress neighbor, lending the movie its 'comic booky' feel. The Dark Knight has its own comic booky feel, but it stays within plausible (read: not supernatural) parameters
Almost. (Spoiler alert below?? I doubt it - but just in case)
I've seen some 'haters' criticize the idea of sonar from cell phones, but that doesn't bother me. (Though there's another political inference there: authoritarian heroes = okay; NSA-like spying on people = not okay, since Fox is against it and Bruce agrees to destroy the program after its use.) Nor does it bother me that the Joker blows up a hospital when the cops knew about it. I'm suspending disbelief, aren't I? This is Gotham, it's a parallel universe no matter how *realistic* things are supposed to be, and the cops are particularly inept in Gotham, and people clap in the court room when the DA disarms a mobster on the stand and still wants to cross-examine him. You see? You could pick apart everything in this movie if what you want is "State of Grace" instead of "The Dark Knight." No, the only moment that breaks continuity for me is when Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face.
Okay, so, a billionaire with nearly unlimited resources as a masked vigilante, fine. A disfigured man with antisocial personality disorder and loads of psychopathology, yes. – These fit within certain parameters. But a guy walking around with half his face stripped to the bone and muscle, eyeball hanging out? What if an insect flew in there or something? I jest, and I'm sure people can explain it away (oh, his wounds were cauterized, i.e. there's no infection, or something) – but I'm sorry, Dent just tips things a little too much toward the Joel Schumacher Batman for my tastes; he's too cartoony - he's supernatural.
Still, the ending of TDK is great. The idea that Batman has to be the antihero in order for the city to heal and maintain hope – okay, it's a little bit melodramatic and we're talking about a fallen District Attorney, not the pope – but it's done so well.
8/10 stars