An DisneyLand E Ticket ride journey into madness and evil.

Rating: 9/10 (4 October 2019)

Actor Joaquin Phoenix plays the part of Arthur Fleck a down and out, mistreated insecure, needy misfit who suffers from acute childhood trauma and a neurological disorder that makes him laugh out loud maniacally in just about any setting for no reason whatsoever. Arthur has a job as a part time for hire party clown and he lives with his elderly physically and mentally disabled mother in a drab and dreary squalid inner city apartment complex as they both live a hand to mouth existence in a struggle to survive.
Then one day Arthur gets in trouble for accidentally taking a gun to a clown show at Children's hospital that he is performing at and as a result he gets unceremoniously fired from his job over the phone by his boss at the Clown show for hire company where Arthur is employed. It is on his way home late at night after getting fired from his job where Arthur is confronted and savagely beaten by three Alpha male wall Street trader goons on a subway car, that Arthur snaps and pulls a gun and savagely and mercilessly kills all three Alpha male Wall Street goons in cold blood. The worm has turned. At least in Arthur's mind it has as he goes from being a terribly mistreated, needy misfit and into a savage and blood thirsty sociopathic killer.
The confrontation that Arthur has with the three Alpha Male Wall Street goons on a subway car triggers a total transformation in his character and in his personality. He becomes hardened and vicious and discovers to his delight that he enjoys killing. He also discovers through a personal investigation of mental hospital records of his mother that he was savagely mistreated, abused and beaten by his mother's live in boyfriends when he was just a small child. So in retaliation for the horrible childhood trauma visited upon him by his mother and her boyfriend he goes to the hospital and suffocates his mother to death while she is being treated in the intensive care unit for a stroke.
This in turn sets off a murderous rampage by Arthur (the now transformed Joker) which in turn sets off class struggle protests and riots against the greedy Wall Street goons and the uber rich of society by the large collections of downtrodden masses as the city of Gotham is set ablaze as rioters loot and pillage the city.
What I find the most compelling about the plotline of this movie is the Joker's(Arthur Fleck) journey from being a downtrodden, needy misfit and into a evil maniacal killer that would rival for sheer evil some of the most infamous serial killers in history. The Joker goes from being a sniveling, little needy, coward into a viscous evil monster in almost the blink of an eye. His mind just basically snaps. This movie is a true journey into absolute madness and evil and it is, in a roundabout way, a case study of what makes some people snap and go crazy like what we have seen from some of the many mass shooters who have gone on recent mass shootings and killing sprees.
From the beginning this movie puts you on the edge of your seat with a hard core visceral edginess that makes you feel very uncomfortable and disgusted from about the first twenty or thirty minutes of the film. It is a Disneyland E-Ticket ride into evil and madness and into the journey of a man going off the reservation and losing his mind as he transforms himself from being a helpless, needy milquetoast and into a evil rogue killing machine reminiscent of other movie characters like the evil Colonel Kurtz in the movie "Apocalypse Now". It is an extremely violent film of a true visceral nature that will leave you wondering how could we as a society have gotten so selfish and so self centered as to have forgotten the least of among us like the downtrodden Arthur Flecks of the world. This movie I think reminds us that the Arthur Flecks, the Ted Bundys and the Charles Mansons of the world are human beings too and are indirectly in a roundabout way the creation of a society that has put a much higher value over the accumulation of wealth and income and material possessions over the needs of the country and the society as a whole.
You can feel absolute sorrow and pity for the Arthur Flecks, the Ted Bundys and the Charles Mansons of the world when they were helpless little children, but as adult monsters you just want to bring them to a very swift and decisive justice where they are made to pay and are punished for their evil and the crimes that they commit against society.
The Horror. The Horror.