"The Dark Knight" doesn't show us people being maimed or killed, but the way that director Christopher Nolan dwells on the anxiety of people who are about to be killed or maimed makes the film completely inappropriate for young children.
From the long opening sequence depicting an elaborate bank robbery, the film feels more like a contemporary R-rated gangster picture than a comic-book tale designed for all ages. One angry bank employee gets a small bomb placed in his mouth and there is a cut just as it goes off. This sets the tone for the "action" that follows.
The morbid aura around the movie has been heightened, of course, by all of the publicity about the late Heath Ledger's performance as the psychotic villain known as "The Joker."
The studio marketing department has been able to turn a potential problem for its summer product into a major selling point. Movie companies get nervous when a star dies before a film comes out. A morbid vibe around a light summer picture could be fatal — if Ledger's last completed film had been a romantic comedy, the studio might have chosen to sit on it for many months.
The Joker in this film is such a malevolent force — and
Warner Bros. started posthumous Oscar buzz for Ledger more than a month before "The Dark Knight" opened and the press took the bait, turning a potential minus into a big plus. Ledger's star turn is impressively creepy, but adds to the horror movie atmosphere that blankets everything. In the first "Batman" movie, Jack Nicholson was very funny as The Joker, but Ledger looks and sounds like a monster.
Ledger's Joker seems to spend half the movie holding a knife to other people's mouths, threatening them with the same injuries that grotesquely disfigured his own face. This is one PG-13 movie that parents should check out before they let their little ones see it.
For this review and others, go to Joe Meyers' podcast at www.connpost.com/entertainment.
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