The Dark Knight Sucks » Rachel Dawes

Brokebat Mountain

tdksucks — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:29:35 +0000

What was with the lovey-dove eyes Bruce Wayne was giving Harvey Dent when running into him and Rachel Dawes having dinner? Clearly Bruce had determined where Harvey would be so he could casually bump into them while on a date with the Russian Ballerina, and then coordinated to join their table. The purpose of that scene was to connect the characters and set up the rest of the scenes in the movie between Bruce and Harvey. It was supposed to display Bruce subtly evaluating Harvey, who was coincidentally dating Rachel Dawes, his love interest from “Batman Begins”. The problem with this scene is that instead of subtle observation, instead of evaluation of his character, the impression the scene gives is that of Bruce giving lovey-dovey eyes to Harvey. If the sound was completely turned down, most observers would think Bruce had a schoolboy crush on Harvey.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But in the context of the scene, it was awkward and a display of mediocre acting, questionable direction, or poor editing (if the editor had multiple takes to cut from, I doubt that was the best possible versions he could have picked).

Are we being warmed up for the appearance of Robin in the next installment of the series? A return to nipples on the rubber suits?

Hey Lucy, RICO Retardo is Home!

tdksucks — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:47:14 +0000

Harvey Dent (shown here as Two-Face), cleaning up the criminal element in Gotham.

Well, the writers must have been a bit more lazy on the day they wrote the segment where Rachel and Harvey were trying to nail Lau on something. Particularly, they were trying to use Lau as a means to incriminate all the crime heads in Chicago (I mean Gotham).

Apparently, they got Batman to go all the way to China, risk his life, illegally kidnap a Chinese citizen who had not been convicted or even indicted on any US-based crime, and bring him back for questioning and they didn’t have an actual plan. They had NO IDEA what to nail him on, they just knew that he was the money-man for the mob. So, when he finally admits to being the banker for numerous criminal organizations, Harvey has a eureka moment with Rachel and blurts “we can get them on RICO!”, presuming of course they can prove just one of the organizations pooling their money with Lau had committed crimes.

A bit of education: RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) is a US federal law. That means HAD that been the case that Harvey chose to pursue that path, he would have to hand over the entire case to a FEDERAL court, taking it completely out of his hands to prosecute – his jurisdiction was at a city level for Chicago (I mean Gotham). He was not a federal prosecutor. If he was, he would be referred to in the movie as a United States Attorney. If some want to argue semantics that he was a federal attorney and merely referred to as a District Attorney, that argument will fail because such positions are appointed by the President of the United States. They are not elected to that position, as is the case with Harvey Dent (it’s pretty clear in both the viral marketing and election context of the movie).

That was just one flaw with that segment; another flaw is the fact that Lau’s lawyer just stood there doing nothing while Harvey and Rachel were using unjust tactics to pressure him to talk, making implications they would place his life in danger based on how much he cooperates. Because, without those tactics, they didn’t seem to even have a clue of what to get Lau to admit to which might implicate the criminals they were after.

From Dent to Bent in The Blink of an Eye

tdksucks — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 10:11:18 +0000

So here we have a courageous District Attorney, Harvey Dent, one who is passionate about cleaning up the city and upholding the law. Although Rachel Dawes is his girlfriend, we are not shown any real passion or love between them. Allegedly he loves her, which is shown in the form of asking him to marry him, but the scenes are missing chemistry. So, when he gets half his face burned off from an accident in which Batman saved him from death, and apparently nobody felt the need to tell him that The Joker tricked Batman and Gordon by telling them the wrong addresses of where he took Rachel and Harvey to, and he learns of his girlfriend’s death, all it takes is for The Joker to show up and push a couple buttons and he’s off on a homicidal killing spree. True, he’s shown in an earlier scene threatening one of The Joker’s lackeys with a gun, it’s never implied in the scene that he’s wandering into anything near madness – or else every scene n the movie where someone blows their top at a bad guy means they’re just a couple button pushes away from psychopathic homicidal mania.