Excellent film, not so excellent sequel.

Rating: 8/10 (19 July 2008)

Firstly, let me stress that this is a great movie, enjoyable, exciting, interesting; great acting and story. But that is comparing it to general movie standards, I didn't expect a great movie, I expected a sequel to Batman Begins. This review is based on the quality of Batman Begins.
The film lacked in many areas, I felt like they replaced all the bad things from Batman Begins, but also the good things!
Firstly, one of the best things about Batman Begins was the stress on batman as a symbol feared, using the darkness and shadows to his advantage, in this one he just turns up, one second he's on the ground, camera changes and bang he's knocking someone down... riiight...
Secondly, the focus should have been on Batman like the first one (in my opinion), taken from his point of view, however most the film we were following Harvey Dent or the Joker (who was played excellently as many have said, makes it sad we won't see another Ledger performance :(), this made the film seem a lot less like a Batman film, more like a film about something else he just shows up now and then.
I think TwoFace's transition to evil was really unbelievable, I think they should have saved him for the next film, showing him in the last shot before the credits role in. However his character was killed just as fast as it was introduced. Joker was more then enough bad guy for the film, he was unnecessary. His end caused a huge anti climax.
Lastly, I think a lot of the film felt like it was patched together... For example how Two-Face kidnapped Harvey Dent and Rachel was pretty ridiculous, so the cops figure "oh we caught Joker, one cop escort should be enough... even though we have mentioned repeatedly many different criminals, politicians etc will be after Harvey Dent". Just seemed very unbelievable and generally not thought through. How the Joker escaped, so whose idea was it to leave just 1 policeman in the room with him whilst he's untied, with no additional police watching. Wouldn't the "bomb" on the "fat guy" be noticed when they were searched, etc etc. To much was just not thought through (or at least it felt that way).
All in all, as a film it was really great, and I did enjoy it thoroughly, I wish it had been 10 hours long! But as a sequel to Batman Begins I was really disappointed.