Unpleasant without redemption

Rating: 6/10 (12 August 2008)

If I'd been sitting at the end of a row in the cinema I would have left after 30 minutes. I've sat through enough hard hitting films to know the difference between meaningful grit and wanton hatefulness. The production values in this film are so high that the 'terror' that is deliberately laid down seems genuinely possible in its evilness. The killings and explosions however do not support the supposedly 'psychological' subtext. Two men sitting either side of the same coin...or as Gotham DA's coin shows....both the same side... is not adequately developed. The story's many conflagrations and large set piece explosions cannot possibly have been set up by one man (The Joker) in any reasonable timescale - and certainly not in the one suggested in the film. The whole thing is just preposterous - it is just an exercise in slash and burn without relief. I had one hell of a headache after seeing this film - I can't have been the only one. One other patron I heard afterwards was positively spitting with rage and contempt over being made to see a film about 'some psychopathic sociopath not Batman'. Heath Ledger evidently had to do himself in in order to kill off the blasted character seeing as Batman wasn't going to.