The Dark Dark Night

Jonathan Nolan, 32, has been helping brother Christopher write movies for some years now. Together, the two of them have become one of the most energetic and daring storytelling duos out there. "The Dark Night" draws so many of its plot points, style elements and tonalities from the "Long Halloween" series of Batman comics, placing the caped crusader in a dark and semi-realistic world of underground crime, exploding public officials and very creepy villains. As director, Nolan (Christopher) pushes every stylistic element to the max, often successfully (like with the sleek new bat 'cave') and sometimes less so (like with his insistence that Christian Bale grunt whenever behind the mask), but all in all he calibrates each performance and set piece perfectly, creating a hellish cross between Law and Order and Escape from New York while staying true to the Batman creed.

This is also a movie about terrorists. It's filled with home-made hostage videos, enhanced interrogation techniques, fear and mayhem. The politics of the film are very vanilla, don't worry. Those 29% of Bush supporters, I'm sure, can find comfort in imagining their man as the Dark Night himself, perhaps bending the rules and taking the law into his own hands, but doing so because no one else can protect Gotham from the looneys; Markos Moulistas and his gang will understand that the true heroes are the guys on the boats who do the right thing, and that burning the forest down to catch the jewel thief is just as bad as letting the clowns over-run the city. But nevermind. Nolan doesn't overplay his hand, and instead presents just enough real life parallelisms to hook us viscerally without overdoing the think factor.

And the hooks are incredible, whether its the Hong Kong airlift or the Batmobile's eject mechanism, th Nolans have found some really fun ways to play with Batman. But what makes these scenes and others so impressive is the way they have been structured into the overall screenplay, how the stakes are always many and increasing, how they are presented with enough subtlety to feel, sort of, possible. The story of so many comic book movies is taken for granted -- see: Iron Man and Hellboy II -- and it is really breathtaking to be fascinated in a plot so deeply. There is so much conflict, so much pathos (so many pathos?), so much warrant and action that we aren't just waiting around for something to blow up, but we are legitimately concerned with how our heroes and villains will respond to their success and failures. This is especially exciting since we all know the lore anyway, and let ourselves be set up for what we know is coming, and then are shocked when and by how it does.

For all that has been made of Heath Ledger's performance-- and I don't think we'll stop hearing about it anytime soon-- I was blown away with what turned out to be the scene stealer: Aaaron Eckhart. Whether as idealistic DA Harvey Dent, killer two-face or Romantic Lead, Eckhart found so many ways to elevate this role and give the character shadows and highlights. OK, maybe the transformation happened a little two quick for comfort, but all in all I'd say this movie was mostly about him, even more so than Batman. If any Oscar nods go out for supporting actor in this movie, I say it should go to him.

The Dark Night was the kind of movie that's worth seeing twice in theaters, then twice on netflix, then ten more times on HBO. The Nolans' careers are already on the fast track, and it will be amazing to see what they think of next. With only one old black guy with white hair exception, the casting was perfect (think Katie Holmes would have elicited any sympathy the way Maggie Gyllenhal did when she met her fate?). I'm sure this movie had flaws, I'm sure some of the depth will wear thin on second viewing, and I'd hesitate to equate this movie with other thriller masterpieces like Minority Report or Terminator 2. But for its freshness, its poise and its precision, at this point at least, I'd have to say this was one of the best films of the year. 8.3