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The Spirit (2008)

This is terrible. If you hear a whirring sound in the cinema, it could just be Spirit creator Will Eisner spinning in his grave. Unfortunately, what’s arrived in the cinemas is not Will Eisner’s The Spirit but Frank Miller’s. There’s a good plot buried under a greyscale colour scheme, dialogue to make you wince with a bizarre reliance on repetition and performances where normally clever and subtle actors have been told to go for a sledgehammer approach to communicating with the audience. Will Eisner’s The Spirit is a series that is colourful and engaging, so if you’re curious about The Spirit, get the comics and give Frank Miller’s monster a wide berth.

The Dark Knight (2008)

The Dark Knight is an impressive film with much to recommend it, but is unremittingly grim and about half an hour overlong at 152 minutes.

Heath Ledger’s Joker is far more of a twisted psychopath than any previous screen interpretation of the character and sick jokes like his vanishing pencil are all designed to make the audience wince instead of laugh. In this film, some of the details of his schemes are as important as their theatricality which gives him genuine credibility as a criminal mastermind.

Sadly, I have to say that Maggie Gyllenhall replacing Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Crispin Glover returning as Alfred, Lucien Fox and the Scarecrow each make very little impact simply because the script gives them very little to work with beyond their assigned roles in the plot. They are either pawns to be sacrificed or sources of moral guidance for Batman to ignore.  Similarly, Christian Bale’s turn as Bruce Wayne is largely functional and his role as Batman, although more significant, is obscured by the voice filter built into the costume.  In fact, more impressive than all five of their performances combined is that of the articulated truck that flips cab over trailer in mid air during a key action sequence that I was quite tempted to cheer.

Aaron Eckhardt as Harvey Dent has more opportunity to shine in script terms than most of his co-stars but squanders it by underplaying a character who in plot terms is intended to exemplify charisma as the rising star of the district attorney’s office, losing the character’s eventual fate some of its impact. The actor most successfully absorbed into director Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of the Batman world is Gary Oldman as the caped vigilante’s police contact, Gordon. He’s the most three dimensional, relatable character in the film and comes across as a person, not a performance. The Dark Knight is definitely worth seeing but not a film that can be watched again and again.

Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans

Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans serves as a prequel set in feudal times to the previous contemporary set films Underworld and Underworld: Evolution. It relates the story of how the Lycans developed from a more bestial werewolf species as slaves of the Vampires before rebelling to form a society of their own. Central to this story are the werewolf blacksmith Lucien and Sonia, the daughter of the Vampire leader. The film plays well enough, but if you’re familiar with the story from its depiction in flashbacks and expository dialogue in the previous films, then it contains no surprises. I liked it, particularly after the risible The Spirit, but couldn’t help feeling that if Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans had taken some risks it could have been a much more satisfying film.