The Dark Knight

I'm sitting in front of an 8 storey high screen. It's formatted for a 1.34:1 display - I'm watching a television the size of an office building. It swamps my vision. I can barely see anything but it. A blue glass building bursts into view, filling every inch of the canvas. We hurtle towards it. I'm crashing into it. Windows shatter and clowns take flight. I feel dizzy. IMAX. Unlike it's hero, The Dark Knight is a film that seems utterly without restraint. People die, buildings burn, and whole sequences are scored with nothing but a buzzing electronic reverb - a giant mechanical fly struggling to get out of a jar, twitching and clawing as a world implodes. Heath Ledger's one-man Al Qa'eda piloting Gotham towards extinction. Events steer down dark alleys into dangerous, upsetting territory. All this, despite the usual Summer baggage: July release date. 12A rated.

Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan and Christian Bale's Batman catches a glimpse of light at the end of his tunnel - rising lawyer Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) is cleaning up Gotham within the confines of the law, one swaggering disarmament at a time. Gangsters squabble and cower while Batman brutally ties up a loose-end from his previous outing. He's close to getting out. Grasping at a relationship with childhood sweet-heart Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). It's nearly over. Bruce Wayne can step down as The Batman. He can make himself a life. Then all fucking hell breaks lose. The Dark Knight is almost a half-billion dollar remake of Dirty Harry, a maverick law-man shedding rules and process to track a terrifying criminal. Like Scorpio, Heath Ledger's Joker is in it for the kicks, not the cash. He kills then cackles, holding an entire city to ransom. At that films' conclusion Callahan tracks and murders Scorpio, blowing a fist sized hole clean through him. Batman allows himself no such luxury. He will allow himself to punish, break and maim his foes, but not go as far as killing them. 

This note of personal temperance is what carries The Dark Knight; the abstract that simmers away as three scarred men clash and battle in a boiling hell. Unlike Batman Begins, were this code is callously jettisoned for a finale in which Liam Neeson's ninja terrorist is, more or less punished, The Dark Knight obsesses over Wayne's promise, and all that it implies. This line, that cannot be crossed, becomes an Achilles' Heel to be exploited by knowing enemies; a procedural blemish that can be ruthlessly stripped apart and used to undermine the potency of a figure premised on fright. Nolan makes text of the most basic (rational?) objection to costumed superheroics: why don't they just kill their colourful, murderous quarry? Why would a Superman suffer the indignity of Lex Luthor? Why wouldn't Batman just erase Joker? After decades of muscled-up monsters exterminating anything that raises an objection on the big screen (and with proxy war oil grabs looming large outside, in the real world), how do you examine the make-up of a hero? You give him a pledge, something he'd rather die than betray, then you dangle every single reason imaginable for him to break it. You tell lies about him. You reimagine him as a slathering beast. And in the end you chase his battered, fleeing body screaming and shooting. Then, hopefully, you make another film just like it.