Okay but overrated

Rating: 7/10 (26 August 2008)

This film is more fun than Star Wars, more thrilling than Indiana Jones, more morally insightful than Gandhi, more heartwarming than It's A Wonderful Life....
That's all to placate the folks who get furious at anything but paeans of adulation for this film.
First of all, I'm sick to death of movies where the bad guy gets free by holding a human shield. With cops five feet away aiming at his head and the hostage yelling "Take the shot." Isn't that what they have firing ranges for? So you can learn to aim a gun? These clowns deserved to get themselves blown up. It's the stupidest cliché in film - Enough, Already!
And this film is l-o-o-n-g. I was looking at my watch thinking "They haven't even gotten to the ferryboat scene yet?"
Harvey Dent knows Gotham is full of evil. He charges 500+ gangsters on one RICO charge. Yet, when his girl friend is killed by the same criminals, he blames the person who saved him instead of the criminals, and does a total 180. Just not believable.
Bringing down the World Trade Center would have been a piece of cake compared to all the explosives the Joker installs. How do you put a bomb in every nook and cranny of a hospital without anyone noticing?
The people who see deep moral issues in this film must be fascinated by blinking lights and totally perplexed by paper clips. The Joker gets as far as he does precisely because the good guys fail to take action. And I'm sorry, but I just don't see Bruce Wayne's use of cell phones to track the Joker as morally problematic. I would definitely not want that technology to fall into certain hands, but wrong? How?
Now the good parts. Give Ledger his posthumous Oscar - he's loathsome, which means he's great. The action is intense and well orchestrated. The greatest hero in the movie is a convict on one of the endangered ferryboats who gives us a moment of pure nobility. It makes for an exciting evening, but not greatness.