Fantastic Heath Ledger performance... MEDIOCRE FILM!

Rating: 8/10 (29 November 2008)

The only 2 reasons I give this film a 7 is: 1) Heath Ledger's fantastic performance, truly deserving all the Oscar buzz he's getting. And 2) Aaron Echhart as Harvey Dent/Two-Face. Despite those two excellent performances the movie is surprisingly... average.
Now how can I say that after it's become the number 2 movie of all time and is one of the highest rated movies on IMDb??? Easily. It was too long and convoluted (and boring). Every time Heath Ledger was off screen I found myself eyeballin' my watch... something I didn't do with Batman Begins (a better film), until - to my surprise - Harvey Dent became Two-Face (I thought they were gonna save him as villain for the next film). When I first saw the trailer to this film I thought two things: Heath Ledger looks cool and the action scenes look dull (Which is why I waited so long to see it in theaters). Now, maybe I'm wrong, but for me, what is essentially an action movie should have exciting action sequences. I couldn't count one. I didn't come to see a Batman movie for a moody drama with a couple of good villain performances... I came for an exciting film. This was not an exciting film.... In Batman Begins Christian Bale gave us the most interesting Bruce Wayne/Batman ever... in this he registers zero.... I could go on forever but this movie is so AVERAGE that it's not worth the time (I'll save longer reviews for truly great films or truly awful films).