If the casting of Robert De Niro as a late-night talk show host wasn’t enough to tip you off, the mood and look of “Joker” is deeply rooted in (not to say derivative of) the gritty New York dramas of the ’70s and ’80s, particularly “Taxi Driver,” “Death Wish” and “The King of Comedy” - the latter of which starred De Niro as a creepy stalker obsessed with a popular entertainer. This oddball, vulnerable soul gets beaten up - literally by goons, figuratively by the healthcare system - and then beaten up again.
It’s a seriously dark urban drama about a charmless schlub (Phoenix) saddled with a brain injury that gives him an inadvertent cackle, caring for his ailing mom (Frances Conroy) and working a lousy gig as a rent-a-clown while nursing dreams of being a stand-up comic. Let’s be clear, this is no comic-book romp. The rest of “Joker” is, in essence, a compelling character study - one whose appeal may be limited to Batman completists, of whom there are certainly quite a few.
(Just ask John Rambo, back at the box office a couple weeks ago.) It’s horrifying, it’s artful - and it’s hardly alone in its cinematic zest for violence. Its final act is, indeed, bracingly over the top, as Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck sheds his sad-sack chrysalis and emerges into full-blown Joker mode. In this, Todd Phillips’ origin story seems to have succeeded, given the amount of lip service paid to worries that “Joker” will weaponize volatile viewers. The aim of the Joker has always been to sow chaos and panic in the citizens of Gotham City.
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