Last night I watched a portion of 'Clear and Present Danger', the movie with Harrison Ford. What is so extraordinary about this film is how accurately it portrays the Pre-Bush American president, as someone who is so strangulated by Congressional oversight and the spectre of Vietnam that international outlaws can operate with impunity. This film encapsulates for me the sclerotic essence of the post-Vietnam era which didn't take a setback until the victory of Desert Storm. One of the great questions of the future, which is probably where Rumsfeld is living in limbo, is how kinetic a small engagement can be between the Systems Administrative forces and the big American War Machine. Suffice it to say that you and I remember when it was Ross Perot's 'job' and now it's Blackwater's. It being the role of American heroic force - the force that has always been required to rid us of criminal madmen.
The latest Batman movie understands the criminal madman very well, and the late Heath Ledger's Joker is the right madman for the times. Oddly enough the other day as I was writing about the perfect criminal, it presaged his role. He doesn't care about the money, he just wants to see the Earth burn.
Boy says this is the best action movie he's ever seen. Then again, he hasn't seen Casino Royale, Heist or Apocalypse Now. But there's some 14 year old in every American that responds righteously to the themes of The Dark Knight, a very, very fitting sequel to the prior episode. If there was any question, let it be settled now. Christian Bale is the best Batman ever, and he has become even more complex and compelling than ever. This was, even at 3 in the afternoon, a clapping movie. Speaking of which, please allow me two quick asides:
- Watchmen is going to be made into a film, by the director of '300'. This is massive. Just massive. It makes up for the failure of Halo to be made into a movie. Really. Now I don't even care.
- Ridley Scott is making a spy movie with DiCaprio and Crowe. I predict it will rival Spy Game with Redford and Pitt.
The best piece about The Dark Knight is Bruce Wayne's cell-phone sonar mapper, the disposable distributed panopticon. Imagine you had the ability to build Carnivore in your cloud. You use it like a one-time pad. Build in secret, deploy once, destroy after. Solves a lot of deniability problems. Brilliant that.
The second best piece was the Joker's fumbling with the remote control as he's blowing up the hospital, partially. Of course, for a guy who believes in chaos and not in plans and rules, he certainly can hide a whole lot of explosives under people's noses. That's alright. I went with it.
Excellent arcs in the characters here. For an action flick you get a whole lot more than the average drama. Almost no corn whatsoever, and of course it was all held together by Bale, Bale, Ledger, Eckhart, and Gary Oldman(!) completely out of character and heroicly long-suffering. Anyway, this is *the* summer movie I have to say.
Once more lightly on heroic themes which are not as cleanly presented as might be expected here, but it gives the film some crunchy nuance and complexity. The Joker represents chaos, but also in tune with the hero, he represents the willingness to break rules. Lesson: The people will pretend to break rules but won't really. They'll only betray one another but never largely. They are served by their common decency, brilliantly illustrated in the two ships scenario, but are prone to be unprincipled to a petty degree when they are discomfited as represented by the betrayals of police. And so the people punt to superheroes in desparate times, but equally to supervillians. What's the difference so long as some order is maintained?
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