The Dark Knight featured many great performances, but it also reminded audiences how good Eric Roberts could be with the right role. While it’s hard to imagine a time when the character didn’t appear in a film every few years, 1997’s Batman & Robin killed the franchise for close to a decade. The reaction to the film was so toxic it immediately nixed plans for follow-up Batman Unchained, which was courting Nicolas Cage and Madonna to play The Scarecrow and Harley Quinn respectively.
Warner Bros’ flirted with several reboot concepts in the aftermath, with a live-action Batman Beyond being considered. Eventually, Memento director Christopher Nolan inherited the series with Batman Begins, with the resulting trilogy proving hugely impactful on the comic book movie genre. The film’s grounded tone and fantastic cast helped wash away the gaudy nightmare of Batman & Robin and reinvented the series for a new generation.
The Dark Knight is considered the highlight of the trilogy, with everything from the performances to the action sequences being acclaimed. While many fans were skeptical about Heath Ledger’s casting as The Joker, he turned in a terrifying turn as Batman’s most famous foe. The film is stocked with great actors, but one turn that tends to go unsung is Eric Roberts as mob boss Sal Maroni.
Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy had a habit of taking great actors whose careers had dipped somewhat from their heydays, such as Rutger Hauer or Matthew Modine, and giving them prominent supporting parts. Eric Roberts had won acclaim in the 1980s for his work in films like Runaway Train or The Pope Of Greenwich Village, but before The Dark Knight, most of his output was STV action or horror films. While Maroni isn’t a huge role he features in several key scenes and Roberts’ gives a nice, understated turn.
While most actors might play a mob boss with a slice of ham, Eric Roberts’ Maroni is more low-key and calculating. The only time he raises his voice or seems out of control is during Batman’s interrogation – which is understandable considering his legs were just broken. He and the other bosses might be aware of how insane The Joker is, but while he’s scoring a win for their interests, they let him run wild. The Dark Knight shows Maroni does seem to have some kind of moral core – or at least a sense of self-preservation – when he admits to Gordon after the death of Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent’s burning that things have gone way too far and gives up Joker’s location.
This isn’t enough to save him from the wrath of Harvey Dent – AKA Two-Face – in Maroni’s final scene in The Dark Knight. Eric Roberts is quite prolific – his IMDb profile has well over 500 acting credits on it – but The Dark Knight was a reminder he can still do great work when given the material. The role also led to an upswing in higher-profile roles for actor like the main villain in 2010’s The Expendables.
