The Dark Knight movie was great. I saw it in a packed movie house with downscale demographics [Mall of the Americas], and yet there were no detectable acts of rudeness in the audience during the movie. Perhaps not a Saint certifying-type miracle to you, but very surprising to this cheap theater aficionado. Granted they are ‘mi pipole’ and I’m just a mild-mannered accountant, but in a typical showing there, you can usually count on at least 3 acts of random rudeness. It’s why I keep the Minuteman Patrol on speed-dial.

Anyways, here’s my problem with the movie, the damage inflicted on the Gotham district attorney’s [Harvey Dent] face after his encounter with the Joker. The damage was extreme to the point of distraction, but not in a horrifying way. It made me conscious of the fact that someone was showing off their special effects on the audience. I kept wondering why some epidermis or saliva was not dripping out and if there was no saliva, how he was able to continue speaking with his regular voice. I would have been fine with either a dry raspy voice or a voice punctuated with a post-sentence slurp, like a kid with braces, but not a regular voice.

By the way, why I enjoy Roger Ebert as a reviewer so much is because he has written with passion about stuff like this. We don’t mind that certain characters are given special powers, but they need to be logical. Not even in science fiction, but especially in science fiction. For example, Superman can fly, but not teleport.

First, kudos to Anthony Michael Hall for carving out a supporting actor and producer’s career. A minor complaint was the scene where the hostages were disguised to appear as Joker soldiers. Early on in the scene, everyone knew what was about to happen, which was the exception, not the rule for this movie. How that long scene in a very long movie made the cut is a bigger mystery than why no homeless people were staking out Bruce Wayne’s inner-city hideout in the movie. Ya gotta figure he’s a huge tipper and those dirty windshields should have acted like a magnet on the downtrodden.

OK, now what I liked about the movie. As usual, great villains make for great movies. Heath Ledger’s Joker was so good, that his character managed to have the audience both scared and laughing. Also, I’m a big fan of Aaron Eckhart [Dent], since I believe he delivered one of the best opening lines in movie history in Thank You for Smoking, when he said:

You know the guy who can pick up any girl? I’m him. On crack.

The same movie had the following classic line from a tobacco company executive [J.K. Simmons] addressing his cowed sales team:

People, what is going on out there? I look down this table, all I see are white flags. Our numbers are down all across the board. Teen smoking, our bread and butter, is falling like a shit from heaven! We don’t sell Tic-Tacs for Christ’s sake. We sell cigarettes. And they’re cool and available and addictive. The job is almost done for us!