WAYYY too long - and way overrated

Rating: 7/10 (31 July 2008)

Let me be the first to say that I think this was an entertaining movie. The visuals were stunning, the action scenes were breathtaking (although hard to keep up with sometimes) and all the characters did a good job with their roles (with the exception of the new Rachel). But this is simply not as good a movie as everyone is making it out to be. I was expecting to be blown away but instead just kind of got bored as the movie drug on. Heath Ledger obviously did a great job as the joker, but his character really didn't make any sense. He described himself as "chaos" and a "man without rules" yet he was able to come up with these ridiculously complicated schemes of incredible planning and magnitude that Batman and the entire police department couldn't keep up with? Like I said, he did a great job, but by the end of the movie he was just coming across as weird. All of the regular characters did a great job, Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman . . . but Maggie Gylenhal was a HUGE drop off from Katie Holmes. Never was able to make any kind of connection with her, never cared for her at all. In summary, this was a good, entertaining action movie that tried to hard to be "dark" and introspective but it was way, way too long. I love a great movie, but I'm not sure what all the hype is here.