quite simply overrated

Rating: 6/10 (1 August 2008)

good movie? yes. Greatest ever? not even close. Don't get me wrong, Heath Ledger gave an Oscar worthy performance that will be talked about forever, but this movie was extremely lacking in all other departments.
First off the movie starts off with the extremely overdone film device where the main bad guy publicly kills off all the other bad guys he's with because he's just that evil and to get the audience to understand "hey this guy is seriously evil." Now this was pretty cool when Darth Vader did this like 3 decades ago, but this has been done hundreds of times in mainstream movies. Quit doing it. On top of that each bad guy is completely surprised when they meet their end. Then new bad guys who should be aware of this keep following him anyway. Despite killing off his own followers his numbers grow and grow.
Then Bruce Wayne who is supposed to be this lonely reluctant hero goes back and forth from living the playboy life to trying to do the forbidden love story without any emotion at all. Then he keeps saying how he has brought the Joker upon the people of Gotham and it's his fault while he shows no emotion at all. If you write a story about someone who feels responsible for the deaths of others, show him drinking liquor, breaking stuff, swearing, etc. Don't just have Bruce Wayne walking around in circles saying "it's my fault, the Joker must be stopped" while doing nothing for more then half the movie.
Heath Ledger takes this movie from an average comic book movie to a good film on his own, but that's it, this is no where close to the greatest movie of all time.