Engaging but.......Joker lacked one quality

Rating: 6/10 (23 October 2019)

I normally don't watch these twisted, psychological, dark and dreary type of movies. But, my friends wanted a boys' night out and I wanted to go.
I was hooked from the beginning. The subtlety, the introspection, the clues revealing a tormented inner conscious. I never really did take my eyes off of the big screen, except for the three brutal killings that were too much for me to endure. I shielded my eyes with my buttered up popcorn hands.
Other than those scenes, I was glued from start to finish.
However, I had one hangup, with Joker as a leader. If he was going for Machiavelli, he failed. Napoleon he was not. He lacked the leadership quality that I would expect of an effective villain. I wanted to get behind his plundering and nefarious motivation, but he didn't hook me. Maybe a reading of Covey or Kabat-Zinn or even Thoreau would inspire the Joker to be less of an opportunist and more of a deliberate, Genghis Khan like figure.
He didn't earn the role of villain. He fell into it.