Overlong, overfunded, overstaffed, overrated---merely okay.

Rating: 5/10 (26 August 2008)

I suppose many people might be offended by the simple suggestion that this movie could be anything less than "the best movie ever" or perhaps just "the best movie of 2008", that it was merely okay, for superhero action drivel.
But to me, that's what it was. It's the old good vs evil thing, the good billionaire dons latex suit to fight the evil for no apparent reason other than that he's the good guy, and the bad guy being ridiculously-over-the-top so, with a similarly solid rationale. Then there is the another good guy who has to experience a biographical kink in the form of a girlfriend blown to pieces and some cosmetically challenging facial events, and he becomes the semi-good guy. Lots of explosions, pseudo- technology, vehicles driving above the speed limit, lots of fighting, the end.
I never really understood the appeal of the Batman franchise, which turned a unremarkable set of comic books (uh, "graphic novels") into an unremarkable series of movies. Yet, many people seem to love it, and consequently another one of those hit the streets, bigger, better, more expensive, and this time with an IMDb rating that even made me curious.
To be sure, there are many interesting and impressive aspects of the movie. The director, for one---I very much enjoyed Memento, and give Nolan a lot of credit for it. The cast of The Dark Knight is nothing short of impressive, with certified talent such as Caine, Ledger, Oldman, Bale, and Eckhardt. And, of course, the special effects are great, the fights are well-choreographed and fast-paced, the cinematography is excellent, and so on. It is, no doubt, a technically well-executed action flick, which I suppose is all that it wants to be, and probably all most of the people seeing it in the cinema expect it to be.
But it is also other things. Overlong, for instance. The trivial comic-book plot does not sustain 150 minutes of interest, its self-indulgent repetitiveness becoming boring quickly, the little character development happening in cartoonish hit-you-over-the-head-with-hamfisted-symbolism style, the rest being fights, battles, destruction, and some more fights. The range of excellent actors that make up the cast remains woefully underused, although we do get so see some excellent acting, most notably from Ledger and Oldman. Ledger's Joker, in particular, does not require a very broad range, but it's far out in the crazy and psychopathic part of the spectrum, and Ledger manages to turn a fairly ridiculous and cartoonish villain into a three-dimensional and utterly creepy character, which is testimony to his acting ability. By and large, however, one does get the feeling that performance per talent ratio isn't a very good one, and that this crowd could have been put to better use in a more grown-up production with less of a focus on expensive action sequences.
Overall, this movie is way over-hyped for what it is, it's not among the top ten movies of all time in my book, but then neither is "Shawshank Redemption" or "The Empire Strikes Back". It does have its moments, though, but it could easily be cut down to 90 minutes.