Don't believe the hype

Rating: 7/10 (29 December 2019)

Given Todd Phillips' body of work - his first project being a documentary about the Joker-esque G.G. Allin - I expected more. It was alright, but ultimately forgettable... basically: "Taxi Driver" with a dash of "Natural Born Killers". The association with the Batman franchise was kind of fun, given the extremity of the content, but that was the only truly memorable part of it. The movie was longer than it needed to be, with a number of scenes with Phoenix hamming it up by himself, and much about it was conventional, slightly cheesy Hollywood fare. Given the interesting premise it feels like more could have been done with it. Maybe the project was rushed, maybe the studio interfered too much... who knows.