First impression from someone who did not like it

Rating: 5/10 (12 August 2008)

What?! Someone did not love this action-packed blockbuster? Blasphemy!
I eventually watched the movie everybody is talking about last Friday. I gave a lot of thought whether I should write a review ...Well why not? I have been actively watching movies for over 35 years so I do feel I have an opinion to share.
Why should I join the rest of the enthusiastic crowd, waving a red book and hailing director Chris Nolan as a genius?
Now, don't get me wrong, I did not hate the movie...OK, let's start on the good bits:
* The first 20 minutes were brilliant: the pace, the editing, the music, photography and dialogues...All the ingredients to prepare the audience for a good show.
* Bale's portrayal of Batman is exemplary: dark, fast and furious.
* Some of the action sequences were excellent including the Batcycle
* And....That's it!
Sure, Ledger's performance as a Joker was very good, not groundbreaking though. And yes, he certainly brought another dimension to the character. But he did not have the same impact or wicked humour (we are talking about a joker after all) as Nicholson's.
For a film of this scale, there were too many 'dead time', i.e. scenes with loads of cheesy dialogues and no action. For a long movie like this one, one needs to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. Take last summer's Transformer, the film was too long for me but still kept a good pace of action sequences.
The biggest problem with The Dark Knight was simple: too many characters and story lines. Sometime after the first 20 minutes, Nolan lost it: the movie was no longer about the capped crusader the film was named after but a whole series of people trying to distinguish good vs evil.
The 90's Batman movies failed for the very reasons: loss of focus when there were too many characters involved.
I reckon the film should have been called 'Harvey's lost it'.
Do I regret watching it? No...So this film comes very neutral: some good scenes but not worthy of the praise it has received.
For the record, Sam Raimy's first Spider-man remains for me the 'perfect' super-hero movie of recent time: simple, well-structured, with a comic book feel and a nice mix of dialogues and action sequences.