Disappointing sequel to Batman Begins

Rating: 5/10 (2 August 2008)

After re-watching Batman Begins only recently, I was very excited about seeing The Dark Knight. Unfortunately, the sequel was nowhere near as good as the last film. Cillian Murphy, who was excellent as the Scarecrow in the first movie appeared on screen for about two minutes and was then written off - which begs the question "why include him in the sequel in the first place?!". Pretty much the same goes for Two-Face. There was a lot of potential for developing this character and it all started off quite well but once he actually turned into Two-Face, he got the chance to be the baddie for about 10 minutes before getting killed off. Heath Ledger was okay as the Joker, even though I personally thought he over-acted the role at times. Admittedly, there were some good action sequences and special effects but on the whole the story lacked consistency and did not really seem to go anywhere. A good example for this is the bit in Hong Kong which seems to have been put in to give Lucius Fox a bit more screen time. In my opinion there was too much focus on cramming in as many characters as possible rather than on developing a convincing storyline.