Do I need to say it?

Rating: 10/10 (30 August 2008)

I remember an evening about two years ago, when I sat down with some friends to watch Batman Begins. A ways into the movie, I remarked on how creepy Cillian Murphy managed to make the Scarecrow, a character that has always been difficult to actually make scary. One friend replied, "He's still not as creepy as Jack Nicholson as the Joker." Said another companion, "Few things in this world are."
This, of course, was months before the first teaser for the Dark Knight had been released. And it was nearly two years before my friend found out how wrong he was.
I'm probably not going to say anything here that hasn't already been said hundreds of times. Bale, Eckhart, Gyllenhaal, and Oldman all deliver. I save special praise for Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine, two actors who are nearly impossible to make look bad. It is Caine's stirring speech, that "Some men just want to watch the world burn," that manages to define the Joker far better than any of his actions.
But, then again, the Joker's pretty damn awesome.
I won't heap praise on Ledger; there are enough people doing just that. What I find with the Joker is that I don't actually think of him as an actor playing a role. He isn't Ledger, he just *is* the Joker. I imagine him sitting in his trailer between shoots sharpening his knives and touching up his make-up. He dominates every scene he's in; his warbling voice and nervous tics(count how many times he licks his lips) are unnerving and get you right on the edge of your seat. The pencil trick in his dealings with the mob is surprisingly funny. It takes several seconds for the whole thing to sink in; the Joker has already said "Ta-daa! It's gone!" before the first person in the theater lets out an unsuccessfully contained laugh. With many good movie villains, you find yourself at some point in the film rooting for them. You want them to win, if only for a moment. Not so with the Joker. You're dreading his victory from the start: your heart pounds in terror as you hope you don't see the grenade go off in the bank manager's mouth, horror fills you as you see the LCD screen of the cell phone light up underneath the badly applied stitches of one of the Joker's henchmen, and you dread seeing hostages disguised as clowns get shot down by SWAT team members. But, of course, he doesn't win, not completely. The actions of the ferry passengers prove that people aren't as twisted as he believes, and he is arrested, even denied Harvey Dent's fall from grace from making Gotham's citizens lose hope. As tragic as Ledger's death is, his performance in this movie might just be amazing enough to prevent Nolan from casting a look-alike to take his place in part three. We can only hope.