Dark Screen (finally)

Rating: 6/10 (24 August 2008)

This movie is too long by about 30 minutes. I was happy when the screen finally went dark. A filmmaker should be able to get his point across in under 2 hours or before the collective audience ass starts hurting.
It's a comic book and the effects and makeup are really great, but still, some of it is too inexplicable and so beyond the possible that it undermines the characters. The Joker is deliciously strange and evil but if he can arrange those events that are so very complex, he starts to look more like a circus ringleader whose dancing dogs and fireworks are the real characters.
The story was very hard for me to follow. I don't appreciate having to try so hard to figure out what and why things happen in a movie. I am still not sure why Mr. "Two Face" went sour and frankly I didn't care that he did.
There is a very heavy thematic effort here; much of film is trying to clearly define good vs. evil and the shifting ambiguity of that, to end with Batman becoming rather dark and isolated. I applaud this kind of effort in an action film, but here the authors take just too long to get there. I was itching to get out of my seat and had to force myself to sit through to the very end, and that's not good for any movie.