Review of Movie Joker

I recently saw the movie Joker which stars Joaquin Phoenix and was directed by Todd Philips. With a screen play by Philips and Scott Silver.  The movie also has Robert De Niro as a talk show host, Zazie Beetz as a possible love interest and some others in supporting roles.

Over all, I thought is was a good movie that was very well made if you like physiological thrillers you will enjoy this movie, it is not an action movie.  It is a departure from many comic book movies in that it is more realistic than most.  It is also an origin story for the classic DC Comics character the Joker of Batman Comics fame. There are many very well shot scenes, all the actors in the movie do a good job.  Especially the actor Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, his portrayal is captivating.

New York is shown in all of its glory, even though the movie was shot in some different locations including New Jersey and there is some CGI to recreate the time frame of the movie.  It delights the eyes, the costumes and other props in the movie create a very realistic late seventies, early eighties vibe.

The plot of the movie has some political overtones, there are some themes that mirror events of today (have vs the have not's). This origin story is of a character named Arthur Fleck who lives with and cares for his mother in Gotham City.  The movie does a great job of creating the gritty, dirty, grimy background of the early 1980's Gotham. The city has crime, unemployment and a population caught up in a class war. Arthur suffers from mental illness and laughs uncontrollably at the wrong moments.

Arthur is not a very reliable narrator of his own story, and there are times when it is not clear that Arthur is providing a correct narrative due to his mental illness.  There are many relationships that are depicted as the Joker sees them, and then there are other ways to view both his actions and what he thinks others have done.  His relationships with his social workers, his mother, and his girlfriend are all relationships that will make you wonder if Jokers view is correct or not.

Arthur has two different father figures, in the movie. One is the Robert De Niro character Murray Franklin who is a talk show host.  Arthur works as a party clown who after he loses his job tries his hand at being a stand up comedian.  The first scene in which Arthur daydreams about being on Murray's show gives early insight about Arthur's state of mind.  The other is the Thomas Wayne who is played by Brett Cullen,which is a very interesting take on the relationship between these two characters.  Which also makes you think about the relationship between Batman and the Joker.

The movie is a slow decent into madness by Arthur as he becomes the Joker.  The movie does a really good job with pacing, you get to see the Joker grow and become more confident as he interacts with other characters and the hardships of life press on him. And this is probably what I enjoyed the most about the movie, but I will say that is was difficult for me to completely suspend disbelief because I could not totally buy the idea that this character could become the character of Joker from the comic books. He does not display the mental strength, nor the amount of evil associated with the comic book character, and this was a problem for me.

The movie could have been a movie about any mentally ill character that is pushed over the edge.  And it borrows a lot from the gritty crime action thrillers from the 1980's movies by Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy (which both stared Robert Di Nero). I just see the Joker character as a larger character who is more intelligent and has bigger goals than are depicted in the movie.

All in all it is a good movie and well worth seeing.  It may require another movie to better develop this character as a criminal mastermind.