Joker

This review may contain spoilers!

To call this a 'Joker' movie is probably more than a little generous, more accurately it looks like a bunch of guys in Hollywood got really into the idea of trying to capture The Dark Knight's lightning into a bottle and fumbled it. I would give Joker a 4.5/10.

Joker is a hypothetical origin story of how one of the most famous comic book villains in history came to be. The catch? None of the writers, the director, cast or the producers really like super hero films or comic books. The film has more narrative flaws than I can really list but the one thing it does excel in is generating a setting; the backdrop of Gotham is like a boiling pot. You see a bleak landscape filled with crime and poverty, people are clamouring for a way out of the very situation they are trapped in. It feels like a place that speaks truthfully to how a lot of people see the world currently, which is a strong chord thematically. The score for the is perhaps the most resonant and important component, it is a haunting melody that is both beautiful, tragic and horrifying all at once; I think most significantly it held this strong link to transformation and represented Arthur Fleck becoming the Joker more than anything else in the film.

Zazie Beetz, who played Sophie Dumond, is a really likeable single mother who seems incredibly grounded considering she lives in Gotham; Beetz's portrayal of being in an enchanting imaginary relationship with Phoenix's Arthur and her actual terror in his presence is remarkably done. Sharon Washington, who played the Social Worker, really has an edge to the government employee facing financial strain and a patient intake that is hard to keep up; Washington makes those therapy sessions come across as tense, fearful moments in the film that heighten Arthur Fleck as a force to be reckoned with.

However, the best performance came from Robert De Niro, who played Murray Franklin. This character wasn't present for a large amount of the film but his presence was strongly felt throughout. De Niro's talk show host was a quick witted, charismatic voice of the people. This character was a master of entertainment, he knew how to be funny and how to conduct a moving show. It was very clear early on that he was a figure our protagonist aspired to be, almost yearned for in a way. Watching De Niro sharply making short work of Arthur as a comedian was satisfying and foreboding all at once, you felt like he had the capacity to be mean-spirited and hold his own when the moment counted. The scene in which Arthur and Murray meet face to face on the show is one of the best in the film, purely for how De Niro conducts the appearance and turns it into an interrogation of a guilty suspect.

Joker just doesn't seem to understand the character it is trying to evoke here; and I say evoke because there is no way I can honestly endorse this as a film that portrayed the Joker at all. Where the Joker is an unknown figure who incites chaos, Arthur Fleck bumbles into a criminal act, enjoys the power it gives him and descends into murderous violence from there. Where the Joker is an intelligent and cunning antagonist who is always one step ahead, Arthur Fleck is a cowardly person who often seems deranged for the sake of it and commits random acts of violence. Frankly the story around Arthur Fleck is boring because it doesn't take advantage of the Joker persona, instead reducing the role to little more than an angry gunman, like the many we see on the news all the time. I'm not saying the film is bad purely because they didn't read a few comic books, no I like to judge a film purely by what it brings to the table. So let's look a little closer at Arthur Fleck; this is a role who is closely associated with humour because he's always wanted to be a comedian. Yet there's very little evidence of that desire outside of one stand up gig he performs in the film. The role has a myriad of mental health issues but these aren't really examined; the way his moments of mania exhibit themselves vary according to the scene and Arthur isn't actually a consistent figure to watch. His one constant is pretty lousy, he bursts into uncontrollable laughter without any control. That's right folks, the Joker's laugh is...a medical condition. Guess they didn't think we'd buy into a guy who just laughs maniacally? The film spends the whole first act telling us repeatedly that Arthur is crazy before he goes off the edge and kills three people; the film then dawdles for a solid hour before kicking things to a close abruptly in the very fast moving final act. It's a story so easy a chimp probably wrote it. There is a subplot around the film that also attempts to link Arthur to Thomas Wayne (Batman's Dad) in a father/son capacity but it's just a boring red herring plot used to jazz the second act up a little and has no value to the story at all. The cinematography starts pretty good but there's some really lazy framing, and any director who thinks they ought to be filming that much text onscreen rather than utilising dialogue ought to re-evaluate their decisions. The editing maintained a lethargic pace and I was swiftly bored by the whole feature. 

Joaquin Phoenix, who played Arthur Fleck, never really manages to keep a consistent bead on what drives his character and how his role functions; It feels like Phoenix uses a lot of twisted body language and an emaciated physical form to pass off the role as it's clear there's not a lot in terms of character performance here. Frances Conroy, who played Penny Fleck, is such an absent role that she never really has a lot of bearing on the film; Conroy and Phoenix doing the troubled mother/son relationship is such a played out storyline that it gets boring pretty quick. Brett Cullen, who played Thomas Wayne, is quite generic as the stoic, true American businessman; his bullying persona and staunch rejection of Arthur as a son aren't interesting qualities of the film but feel like redundant detours on the way to the end.