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The Dark Knight -- not that dark
I finally saw The Dark Knight which had everyone talking a few months ago. To begin with, it's not a good film or a particularly bad film; it's not properly a film at all, rather an action flick along the lines of the later Die Hard films and should be regarded as such, rather than with the inflated value that people I know seem to have assigned to it.
In that light it's fine as a piece of ephemeral entertainment, exciting even, although not without its flaws. The actors insist on delivering their poorly-written lines in ridiculous voices, with Bale trying to sound mysterious (?) and Ledger just sounding corny. Far from great acting on Ledger's part, the Joker comes off as no more than a glorified and humourless Beetlejuice. The characters are flat, and despite its irksome desire to shock, in its best moments it's merely suspenseful (though not so artfully as, say, Rififi), and in its worst simply gruesome.
I think it would be giving the film's creators too much credit to infer that when the Joker refers to Dent as an 'ace in the hole' they intend a reference to Billy Wilder's 1951 masterpiece by the same name. On the other hand, perhaps that's what they had in mind -- if so, it's apt in a way, for Wilder's film is a much more introspective and cutting reflection on the baseness of human nature.
Unlike the emotionless dramatic foils featured in The Dark Knight, the characters of Ace in the Hole are self-serving in the way that real people are. Dark as the Batman flick occasionally is, it ultimately contains a number of flat heroes and villains, which is what makes it a commercial success. This is, of course, to be expected from a superhero film; the only reason to indict this one is the fact that many pretended that this film was something more (it isn't). A film which looks deeply into the hearts of everyday men and acquits none, as Wilder's film does, could never be popular. If we're talking about 'dark', then Wilder's depiction of human nature is as bleak as it gets, and it's a much more moving film (if less of an adrenaline rush for the illiterati).