Incredible dark gritty movie, forget rich powerful superheros, this is the time of the underdog.

Rating: 10/10 (5 October 2019)

After falling out of love with the Marvel & DC universes and now pretty much giving up on all super hero movies altogether, I was apathetic when the ads for Joker first appeared in my local cinema. I looked at my 16 year old son, who loves watching movies too, and we both shared the same thought: "yeah whatever"....
But as the trailer rolled, it started to look interesting. Then I checked facebook, and friends who had seen the trailer too were talking excitedly. Someone said "in Marvel they take a human and give him superpowers, here we have the opposite, a man who has everything taken away from him" and that really resonated with me.
This is one of the most important movies of our time, starring one of the most important actors of our time, the incredible Joaquin Phoenix, who has blazed a trail of cinematic excellence for many years and who's career, I think, culminates to huge climax here in this film.
It's dark, dark, dark. So damn gritty and real the camera work gives us this filthy downtrodden vision of Gotham and city on the brink of self destruction. No one flys or has a special suit there are no superpowers, or laser beams, there is just a man being spat out by the system, which is run by the rich for the rich and is becoming increasingly greedy and selfish. Included in this system is the Wayne family, who despite whatever their intentions actually are, are presented here as little more than white over privileged rich people who live in a huge gated house with private security. Yeah whatever Bruce but did you ever really spend time in the ghetto?
This is the commentary and Joker is trying, he's really trying to absorb the hate and the crap and the downright hardship that life is throwing at him, but he lacks the presence of mind to do it quite literally, struggles with an insane urge to laugh all the time even when things are absolutely not funny and of course the rest is history.
I hope this doesn't spoil it for you, go and watch it, that's 2 hours of your life you will want to repeat.