The Dark Knight Rises As Something Very Real

We've come a long way from the Batman experience of the '60s. Here is part of Jenny McCartney's review of the 2008 version.

...the greatest surprise of all – even for me, after eight years spent working as a film critic – has been the sustained level of intensely sadistic brutality throughout the film.

 I will attempt to confine my plot spoilers to the opening: the film begins with a heist carried out by men in sinister clown masks. As each clown completes a task, another shoots him point-blank in the head. The scene ends with a clown – The Joker – stuffing a bomb into a wounded bank employee's mouth.

After the murderous clown heist, things slip downhill. A man's face is filleted by a knife, and another's is burned half off. A man's eye is slammed into a pencil. A bomb can be seen crudely stitched inside another man's stomach, which subsequently explodes. A trussed-up man is bound to a chair and set alight atop a pile of banknotes.

A plainly terrorised child is threatened at gunpoint by a man with a melted face. It is all intensely realistic. Oh but don't worry, folks: there isn't any nudity.

Read the rest of it here.

Most readers will be living the cultural impact of this event as it unfolds. For now, let us mourn for those we lost and for their loved ones and friends they left behind.

Hat tip: The Drudge Report