A grimy take on comic book films that misses it's potential

Rating: 7/10 (3 October 2019)

DC has gone for that "gritty" dark style as opposed to Marvel's bright and colourful style. One outcome is that DC films have become dour affairs, and another is that Marvel films are very superficial when it comes to characters.
Joker continues in the DC vein, and hats off to Warner Bros for swinging for the fences with a film like this. It's a bold choice, but unfortunately it also falls short of said fence. At time of writing it has a 9.4 rating here and that is way, way to generous. This is a 7 rated film at best.
Joaquin Phoenix is great as the titular character. The overall story is good, if a bit hardcore, at least compared to most comic book movies. This really isn't a comic-book movie, despite having notable comic book characters. It's a very realistic take on the origins of the Joker, and on that note it's a great effort.
The real tragedy of this film is that's it's really close to being great, but falls short. The violence is a bit too realistic to be enjoyable in the way that James Bond, Mission Impossible or even Marvel films are. There's only a few violent scenes, but they're stripped back and raw. It definitely deserves it's hard R rating, but there's no fun either.
The world of Joker focuses tightly on Phoenix and the un-comfortableness of mental illness. The Joker's character is not unlikable for most of the film, but he is not likeable either. This makes the film watchable, but not necessarily enjoyable. Aside from some great cinematography and shots, there's no parts that you'll think back on and go "Wow, I'd like to see that again."
The problem with such a tight focus on the main character is that it eschews creating a setting for that character. With so many incendiary elements in today's world (Black Lives Matter, anti-capitalism, a sense of disconnection from each other etc) that could be mined for fuel, the writers chose the most unrealistic elements instead. Rather than creating situations that feel real for the characters to inhabit, the film instead chooses two-dimensional set pieces that fall flat and are unsatisfying.
To wit, most people do not go crazy at the drop of a hat. Take the 1992 LA riots. There had been simmering tensions for some time, and all it needed was a spark. When that spark came, the whole city exploded. The spark in Joker is both too weak to inflame a city, and too unnatural. The anti-capitalist sentiments are not allowed to fester with the audience, and thus the final settings in the film of the "revolution" are fake and unearned. If the writer's/director had done that simple thing of adding a little more context and meat to the Joker's world, it would have made the rioter's worship of a homicidal manic a little more understandable.
This film made me think of Taxi Driver, but with some notable differences. In that film, De Niro's Travis Bickle is an olden day incel, but is at least redeemed by a 'noble' act - saving Iris - however twisted his motives were. It presents both a character that most people wouldn't like, but manages to make him into a good guy, in only because he does what people wish would happen and he's better than the really bad guys.
Arthur Fleck by comparison is offered no such redemption. That would actually be okay if at least the world which he inhabits connected with us. Instead however, rich people are jerks, and the rioters are shown without any real context. They're rioting, but against what? Random anti-capitalism that we're supposed to recognise? There's always been rich people and poor people, but that's not what sets off riots. What sets off riots is (at least a sense of) injustice. There's certainly opportunism by some in those situations, but that comes after the fact.
Fleck's first victims did nothing worthy of inciting riots and mayhem - they were boorish jerks worthy of contempt, but not burning a city down. There have been riots and protests against capitalism in the real world, but they all have context. Random, un-contextualized mayhem is unsatisfying, especially in a film that goes to such lengths to delve into it's character's psyche. Maybe that was the point; the very people who torment Arthur are the same people who worship him at the end. Everyone is irredeemable and everything is chaos.
This is where the film truly failed for me though. The Joker as a realistic, insane, delusional character is a low-key take on the supervillain genre, but it works. I like that DC are going down the darker path. Is he an incel? I guess so. I can see how it could be construed to glorify horrific actions, but I really do think that those who claim that (the incel part, there's more than enough movie violence to inspire people everywhere) are reading into the film something that really isn't there. Senseless violence, yes, but not everything else (that I'm told) comes with the incel losers on Reddit. There's no violence towards women, no moralising on the excesses of sex in the media and so on.
So yeah, hard R. Realistic depictions of violence. A stripped back origin story. And completely un-enjoyable to watch. Taxi Driver was saved by Bickle's redemption, but his world was understandable. Fleck didn't need that redemption (since he is in fact a supervillain and quite insane), but his world is half-baked and lazy.