Fantastic film that's no fun to watch

Rating: 9/10 (15 October 2019)

Pheonix's performance is phenominal and easily one of his best. The slow build of the film is what makes the final payoff all the better. It's a slow burn witnessing a mentally unstable person degrade into a psychopath. It's very uncomfortable to watch but you cant look away, I found my heart racing in the last third of the film and felt physically uncomfortable which is extremely rare for me to experience from a movie.
People complaining about the pacing of the overall story need to realize that this is a character study. The story itself does not matter, the focus is entirely on Arthur and only Arthur. None of the characters really matter. That's the entire point of the film. It starts slow to get you into the mind of Arthur and to get to know him before his degradation into madness, which makes his descent all the more heartbreaking. You have the morally grey area in the middle where he kills the wallstreet kids but takes it a step too far by chasing down the third guy and gunning him down. From there you start to lose the Arthur you felt bad for and are inching ever so closer to the Joker.
You grow to like Arthur and feel bad for him but by the end you start to despise what hes become, even though it's all the external factors throughout his life that pushed him to that point.
Every movie no matter how brilliant has its flaws, but from what I've seen, most peoples gripes are very minor complaints that really dont take away from the film or i guess went in expecting something different from the movie.
Easily the best movie I've seen in the past 5-10 years and a huge payoff for DC taking the risk.