Ummm... not the "masterpiece" the marketing dept at TDK wants you to believe.

Rating: 4/10 (19 July 2008)

I saw this movie opening night, a fan of Batman Begins, and eager to see the next installment of a promising franchise. I purposely avoided the "hype" prior to watching - I like to watch a movie with as little preconception as possible.
After having seen the movie, I am blown away... by the 30-something pages (at present) of cloned reviews stating that The Dark Knight is "a masterpiece" "an instant classic" "epic" "better than the hype" "legendary" "oscar-worthy", etc. It wouldn't bother me so much except all 30 pages of reviews say *exactly* the same contrived things. Not until after you get past these "glowing" marketing reviews, do you see 10 pages of real honest reviews buried in the back. The real tragedy is that I used to feel that this website was credible, but now I'm not so sure. A few hundred picture perfect reviews here are worth multiple millions in next weekend's ticket sales. That's an easy decision for a marketing department to make.
But back to The Dark Knight and back to reality. Here are just a few of the problems with it:

Poor character development. With the possible exception of Harvey's character development (which was too rushed) you don't really feel any sense of growth, change, or evolution of the characters. In each of the many acts in this film, the same conflicts are presented over and over - the characters are stuck in a loop - the main thing that changes are the locations and who gets blown up. In some cases you have no idea what the motivations of the characters are. The Joker is insane, maniacal, twisted... but ultimately with no explanation of why he does what he does. Shocking behavior without a point is... well, pointless.

Poor storyline development. There is no beginning middle and end. Nothing is actually resolved (aside from the fate of a few characters); again it's just a series of loosely strung together conflicts that happen over and over again in various iterations during the course of 2.5 hours. The ending is very unsatisfying as there is no sense of resolution.

The action/fight sequences are filmed too closely and irritating to watch. The fast movement and the close up shots are indistinguishable and you can't tell what's actually happening. While it's visually stimulating (in an MTV kind of way), it's not very intellectually captivating to watch body parts of one unknown person striking the body parts of another unknown person for minutes at a time (I know this because I had to keep checking my watch).

The cinematography was too dark. While this was obviously a choice for establishing the mood for the film, it made the film a strain to watch. The very few scenes shot in brighter light or daylight were a relief to the eyes, but these were few and far between.

The above paragraph applies to the theme of the movie... it was so pervasively dark, grim, and depressing, with almost no contrast, it made it very exhausting to watch. I typically enjoy "dark" films, but the successful ones manage to infuse variation and interesting counterpoint throughout.

For all of these reasons the film is just too long... films can be interesting for 2.5 hours but in light of all the problems above, this film just dragged on and on.

The "social experiment" reminded me of an assignment you might get in a first semester college psychology class. "Discuss what people might do if they're in a boat..." It was just a bit too contrived for me and I found it a bit laughable. The result was even more contrived.

Heath Ledger: Great performance but impossible to view the film and not feel the impact of the actor's untimely death as you watch him on-screen. His interpretation was excellent and his actual dialog was well-written, but his character could have been so much more interesting if there were some basis for understanding the origin of his insanity.

I really wanted to love this film as much as Batman Begins, but unfortunately I found my interest drifting at times. It was not a bad movie, and there were some great moments as well, but just not the "masterpiece" the marketing types want you to believe.