I had to concentrate on staying entertained.

Rating: 6/10 (27 January 2009)

Good movies should create "the willing suspension of disbelief," meaning you forget that it's just actors and special effects. This movie failed to deliver that for me. I kept waiting for it to match the review hype but it only had random moments.
The Eastwood/Devil voice of Batman needed explanation. It was too far off from his regular voice, like a crank caller. Was it just assumed to be an identity trick? It was hard to work up empathy for either Wayne or Batman. The best acting I've seen from C.B. was in "The Machinist" (a far more disturbing and better film than this).
Excessive lesions on C.B. and M.G. were distracting in close-ups but that's not unique to this film. M.G. isn't what I would call hot, and it's unclear how she got to be the object of rich desires. She added a dowdy effect that dampened the felt urgency of certain things.
Many special effects went beyond fantasy. Vehicle mass defied inertia laws in crashes; like the Bionic Man pushing a building. The bat-cycle was ludicrous in how it could blast every obstacle out of its way. The cellphone sonar was logistically absurd, if even technically possible. I like special effects with some chance of realism. The half face, half sinew thing was well done, but the sudden meanness of the D.A. seemed forced.
I found the opening bank scene the most engrossing, promising part. The guy on the street corner dangling the mask had a spookiness I was expecting from the rest of the film, but it washed out. Where was all the "darkness" reviewers wrote of? I guess he kept kid audiences in mind. The Joker was well done but no more menacing than random creeps interrogated on C.S.I.
Most importantly, the plot didn't feel naturally driven by events (see title of review). I think a rare combination of hype and the death of H.L. carried this film to a higher status than it deserved.