Drew McWeeny‘s combo-review piece on The Dark Knight and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, posted this morning at 7:38 am, is too sprawling and wind-baggy. He’s a first-rate writer but it wore me down. That said, here’s the best graph in the whole piece — a tribute to Aaron Eckhart‘s Harvey Dent performance in the Chris Nolan film.
Eckhart “deserves some praise as well for the way he brings Dent to life, and for finding a way to play earnest without becoming overbearing,” Drew says. “Dent’s a more difficult role than the Joker in many ways because there aren’t as many big emotions you can play. He’s a decent, upstanding man who believes in doing things right, in prosecuting criminals instead of fighting them on a street level, and little by little, he’s actually making a difference.
Eckhart, in short, “gives the guy an inner life, just enough quirk to make him seem human, so that when the inevitable tragedy (which really is awful as laid out in the film) occurs, it’s not a simple on-off cartoonish lurch into violence for Dent. We feel it. We believe it. Dent’s physical trauma may be exaggerated, but the emotional side of it is pitch-perfect. And his work as Two-Face is just sad and angry. He’s nothing like the Joker. Hell, I’m not even sure I’d call him a villain.”