Not all that dark if I'm honest

Rating: 4/10 (2 August 2008)

OK, ignore the so called "great opening scene" of the bank robbery. It's good but its nothing to be spouting the word "brilliant" over. The 2nd scene with fake batmen is better but you don't know who the real Batman is, especially when he's talking like he's got a really sore throat or is doing an incredibly poor Clint Eastwood "Dirty Harry" impression.
And that's what ruins his dialogue with Chief Gordon in the 3rd scene in the bank vault and in the rest of the movie in fact. Call me old fashioned but I like to be able to HEAR clearly what the lead character in a movie has to say.
The movie looks OK, its suitably dark in places. The plot is average at best with The Joker robbing mob banks to get their attention so he can offer to kill Batman for half their money. Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker is unimpressive, its not this ultra-dark madman that all the critics & fans will have you believe it is. Cesar Romero's Joker was scarier than that. Jack Nicholson's Joker buries Ledger & keeps the shovel as a souvenir.
Ledger's Joker is not only not scary he's also a liar who can't keep his stories straight. Like the story of how he got the scars on his face. That his father did it or that he did it to himself with a razor to appease his wife.
In the scene where they are having the parade for the dead Commissionar is that Noel Fielding of The Mighty Boosh as one of The Jokers gunmen? We're shown Gordon is killed (and the movie just jumped the shark at that exact moment) and then Bruce Wayne offers to turn himself in as Batman to stop Joker's killing spree.
Local District Attorney Harvey Dent organises a press conference then outs himself as Batman to the surprise of Bruce Wayne.
During the prisoner transfer scene there's lots of views of Lower Whacker Drive so yet again this was filmed in Chicago and they obviously don't think anyone has ever seen The Blues Brothers. More vehicle chase and the ONLY good moment of Ledger's Joker is him demanding Batman run him down on the motorcycle then Joker is captured & its revealed Gordon wasn't really dead & he's appointed Commissionar.
Telling Batman he's captured Dent & Rachel (Batman's love interest from the previous film) he then reveals where they both are so Batman can only rescue one of them. Batman goes to where he thinks Rachel is but it turns out that's where Dent is. Rachel is killed in an explosion (unfortunately her "dead" body blinks when we see it) and half of Dent's face is burnt (this is how he becomes Two-Face).
Having distracted Batman & the Police away from the station Joker uses his phone-call to detonate a bomb inside one of his men then goes to find the Japanese Mob boss that the police had in custody.
The trouble with the movie is it's at least 1 hour too long. It takes too long for Dent to become Two-Face, it takes Joker too long to put his millions of plans into action & achieve all their aims. Threatening the hospitals to allow Joker to get to Dent. The other back story (fronted by Two-Face) of 2 traitors within Gordon's unit (with the 2nd turning about to be Gordon's PA) is played alongside the main plot of The Joker trying to get people to kill each other is just one of the reasons why this movie is too long by an hour. You can't have 2 villains with 2 different agenda's. Pick 1 guy and 1 story and stick with it.
In the hostage situation it was painfully obvious that the clowns were hostages as soon as Gordon looked at them through the binoculars (only a brain dead idiot didn't work THAT out in a microsecond). To have Batman attacked by dogs a 2nd time is just to return to the start of the movie (and whats the point in doing that so close to the damn ending!) and we already knew he'd improved the costume to be bite-proof so this was a pointless scene.
The only really good scene in the whole movie is the reaction of the prisoners on the ferry (throwing their detonator out of the window). The conversation between Joker & Batman is too long and pointless, the movie should end right there (actually it should have ended over an hour ago but that's beside the point) but the director felt the need to close his final storyline with Gordon confronting Two-Face (not like Gordon ever did anything to Dent but why let a huge plot-hole like that spoil you dragging out the ending of your movie).
Two-Face shows exactly how weak (for weak read "incredibly crap paper thin plot idea") his justification of taking Gordon's family is. When a villain is actually telling you the audience that his motives are crap, you (Warner Studio's) should really be considering sacking the person who wrote the script as he's completely derailing himself as having a believable motive.
Two-Face shooting Batman is pointless as the audience already known his costume was upgraded with Kevlar after the 2nd scene. The ending (if you can call it that) is sheer crap. Batman telling Gordon to make Dent a posthumous hero & blame the deaths he had caused on Batman. Batman telling Gordon to send the police after him. And not finding out what happened to The Joker. An incredibly weak movie, WAY too long for its own good. Too many villains with individual story lines to follow. What little ending there is is left gapingly open to allow for a sequel.