Watch 'Nightcrawler' instead

Rating: 4/10 (23 January 2020)

This movie has already been done, and much more successfully. 'Nightcrawler' set the standard for lonely-sociopath-craves-recognition movies and 'Joker' comes nowhere near its impact.
While 'Nightcrawler' avoids creating any sort of sympathy for the character, 'Joker' dares us NOT to feel sorry for him. It can't (or won't) go the extra mile and simply create a character with no redeeming features, which is exactly what the Joker should be. Instead, it insists on pulling at our heart strings by filling the first half of the movie with endless scenes of sorrow and misery for the character.
It is nothing more than a sugar-coated vision by the director, and Phoenix, while doing admirable work with what little he was given,just comes across as pathetic and haphazard. Almost like each scene was created on the spot.