"The Dark Knight" is De Palma plus Coppola plus Kubrick plus Cronenberg?

2008-07-10 18:00:52

"No matter how good 'The Dark Knight' is," writes Steven Zeitchik at the Hollywood Reporter's Risky Business blog, "how mindblowingly, dazzlingly, pulsatingly, wish-Heath-was-still-here good -- is it better than 'Casablanca' or 'Lawrence of Arabia?' " It's not an entirely rhetorical question, at least in that the feverish early reviews have swung for some eyebrow-raisingly high fences: David Poland: "This is not a Batman movie... this is a 2008 version of The Untouchables with The Batman as Elliot Ness, The Joker as Al Capone, much better toys, and, it seems, a topper." Peter Travers: "It's enough to watch Bale chillingly render Batman as a lost warrior, evoking Al Pacino in The Godfather II in his delusion and desolation. It's enough to see Ledger conjure up the anarchy of the Sex Pistols and A Clockwork Orange as he creates a Joker for the ages." Richard Corliss: "In its rethinking and transcending of...

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