Movie Review: ‘Joker’ is wild, thanks mainly to Joaquin Phoenix

Can you be troubled and entertained by a movie at the same time?

Other films have prompted that question, but 2019’s “Joker” – which TNT shows Saturday, Aug. 31 – may be the ultimate example. If you’re disturbed by its promise of a violent scenario of urban decay, it’s for good reason: Director and co-writer Todd Phillips doesn’t shirk from depicting that for a single minute of the picture’s running time.

The film also wants to explain how Batman’s maniacally laughing DC Universe enemy became who he is, giving Joaquin Phoenix the means for a mesmerizing performance. While the part brought Heath Ledger a posthumous Oscar for “The Dark Knight” (2008), Phoenix makes it his own with a physicality virtually impossible to forget. His dancing on a staircase like a bizarre Fred Astaire absolutely ensures that.

You might be surprised to feel empathy for the character as his earlier circumstances become clear, but eventually, he becomes the Joker that we know and fear. Someone who should fear him – but his ego won’t let him – is The Joker’s idol, a talk-show host played by Robert De Niro in a neat reverse twist on his work in “The King of Comedy” (1982).

An easy way to turn someone’s feeling for you from fondness to fury is to mock him openly, and that’s just what De Niro’s Murray Franklin does to Arthur Fleck, alias The Joker ... resulting in the cautionary note the film intends to strike. The concerns that some voiced over “Joker” even existing obviously are understandable; since the movie does exist, if it’s taken strictly in cinematic terms, it has to be said that it achieves what it wants to.