International attitudes

Thanks to a family-orientated marketing campaign, including action figures being given away at Burger King, excited youngsters across the world are demanding to be taken to see The Dark Knight. Once persuaded, however, many parents have been left aghast by scenes of extreme violence - and the dismayed reactions are by no means confined to the UAE. In the UK, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has come under fire in a record number of complaints from parents and politicians angry about the movie's 12A rating, which allows children below that age to see it provided they are accompanied by an adult.

The mother of Robert Dunne, who was murdered by a teenager with a samurai sword in a street attack in the English town of Middlesbrough in 2003, is campaigning to have the movie's rating raised. Barbara Dunne said the film would encourage children to carry and use knives. Others have backed her. A Labour politician quoted recently in The Independent newspaper said: "The BBFC should realise there are scenes of gratuitous violence in The Dark Knight to which I would certainly not take my 11-year-old daughter."

The BBFC responded by blaming parents. It insisted that the 12A classification meant a film was not suitable for young children and that while there was no problem with the rating system, "parents needed to be aware of what a 12A film was about before taking their children along". Keith Vaz, the chairman of the House of Commons home affairs select committee, has also entered the controversy, saying he had seen the film and planned to summon the BBFC to his committee's hearings on knife crime in October.

Similar criticism has been voiced on the other side of the Atlantic. "Is The Dark Knight too dark for young kids?" asked a columnist in The Tennessean. "It most certainly is, especially for those eight-and nine-year-olds I saw in the audience a couple of weeks ago." USA Today reported that while most filmgoers were prepared for a grim, menacing adaptation of the popular comic book, some were still taken aback by certain aspects of the film.

Richard Corliss, Time magazine's film critic, wrote: "Don't take your nine-year-old son unless you think he'd enjoy seeing a kid just like him tremble in fear while a gun is held to his head by a previously sympathetic character."