That Batman Movie

[bryant]

We finally caught it over this last weekend. I guess a lot of other people did too, since it’s hit 300 million bucks already. I am eagerly waiting to find out if it has the sort of legs that’ll get it into the top five ever domestic, although I suspect it won’t.

Somewhat surprisingly, it didn’t blow me away. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t overwhelm me. Great acting, excellent plot and theme — I thought the whole balance of duty and public personae was superb, and it echoed through both good guys and bad guys. The early Scarecrow appearance was ideal.

Still and all, the movie needed to be half an hour shorter. I’m not sure what you’d cut — you could lose the foreign travel and edit out the cell phone moral dilemma, but you’d still have a movie that feels somewhat overstuffed. I’ve heard a lot of people call the movie relentless, and it was, and I liked that. I just think it would have been tighter with a couple fewer beats in the Joker’s plan.

Nobody’s ever accused Christopher Nolan of being insufficiently intricate, I suppose.

Second, the fight scenes were muddy. I have a sudden fear that I’m getting too old here, except I recall liking the fight scenes in the last Bond movie, so — crap. Yeah, I’m getting old. Well, the fight scenes were still muddy. Batman’s sonar vision did not help this in the least. Nolan’s not known as an action director, obviously, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but he ought to get someone to give him a hand with the fight scenes next time. In all fairness, the car chase was pretty great.

So as not to give the impression that I didn’t like the movie…

Really good acting all around; probably the best I’ve ever seen in a superhero movie. I loved that it wasn’t Batman’s movie — it was about Commissioner Gordon, the Joker, and Harvey Dent. All three of those guys were great. Particularly Gary Oldman. I wish it had been more Rachel Dawes’ movie, but even so, Maggie Gyllenhaal kicks Katie Holmes’ ass.

Batman really doesn’t make a lot of choices during the movie, and the one choice he does make is predicted and subverted by the Joker. That’s practically a theme — Harvey Dent takes Batman’s choices away from him, the Joker does it a few times, and so on. Thus, the aforementioned trio has to drive the movie, and they’re really good at it.

Also, Heath Ledger’s performance is about as scary-good as people are saying; emphasis on scary. The movie’s worth it just for that.

Originally published at Imaginary Vestibule.

Comments

Re: action cinema

[kalyx.livejournal.com]

I finally sat down and watched the clips that went with the essay. Very interesting and incredibly informative. Now I totally get what I'm seeing that I detest in modern action cinema. Too bad The Born Ultimatum clip was taken down, because I honestly do not remember my reaction to the Borne movies. But the choice of clips was interesting.

I have always loved the way the fights were filmed in the Bruce Lee movies, but found the movies themselves to be plodding. Now, looking at the clip from Enter the Dragon I see why. They needed tighter editing. Otherwise, it was filmed beautifully. But what was really fascinating was the inclusion of the opening of Natural Born Killers. I've always heard others spout that the downfall of modern cinema was the introduction of the MTV style editing. I always believed that claim to be true, but that clip speaks volumes. The tight edits are not the problem in modern action sequences. The scene in the diner was flashy, but the action was easily followed and made cinematic sense. No the problems folow The Matrix. The referenced scene, was fine. Sure it was super glossy and used wire-fu, but you could start to see the problem developing with the camera movements and cuts. When you take the sort of action filming that is seen in The Matrix and add the desire for believability by filming w/ handheld cameras, using fast off center camera work, and lots to zooms, the result is not only incoherent beyond there's fighting going on, but dizzying.

But the Oldboy clip is so perfect. That is one of my very favorite action sequences ever. Thanks for sharing.

Re: action cinema

[bryant]

Pity they dropped those clips; I wound up disagreeing with the author. I thought the Bourne clips were quite good -- yes, it's a shaky camera but the action is filmed from enough distance and with enough continuity to be very clear.

Re: action cinema

[kalyx.livejournal.com]

I saw both of the Bourne movies and liked them, but I don't remember much about the action sequences. I do like Paul Greengrass and in general like the way he approaches movie making. His films always have a documentary feel. Very grounded, using the realistic quality of the hand held cameras, but having enough sense to try to keep the audience from getting motion sick!

I wish I could remember the specifics of how he treated the numerous action scenes of the Bourne flicks tho.