Good but a few disappointments

Rating: 8/10 (27 June 2011)

Dark Knight was a good movie - it was dark and gritty, as billed, and I thought Christian Bale (as the flawed hero Batman) and Heath Ledger (as the psychotic criminal Joker) were great. The opening sequences of the bank heist and Batman in action were exciting and grim - they hooked me in. My disappointments were (1) Some clichés slipped in at about the halfway point - the old trick of "who do you choose to save?" was used twice in one form or another. (2) Movie also slid into the cliché of stating that being good (ie, Batman) means being handicapped against the bad guys, because bad guys have no rules. I would rather see the hero outmaneuver and out-think the bad guy - anticipating and frustrating various warped tactics the villain might use - not be flummoxed by the requirements of goodness. (3)Plot seemed to veer off and get overly complicated, to me, after the midway point. The emergence of the character of Two-Face, while interesting to Batman enthusiasts, distracted from the main storyline of The Joker, as I see it. >> All in all, I thought it was a good film, but not a great film.