Better than turgid Batman Begins; went down with typical clichés in last 1/2 hour

Rating: 8/10 (20 July 2008)

The Dark Knight is very good. It met my expectation amid the hype.
It's a better film than Batman Begins, which I disliked for its weak story, hack editing and subpar acting (Katie Holmes's acting was amateurishly horrible) as noted in my previous review. It carries a darker tone compared to the preceding Batman movies, including Batman Returns.
The strength of the film lies on the story and Health Ledger's performance. Heath was splendid in this movie without going "hysterically" over the top. Chris's direction is fine, until the last half hour that became confusing and overdone with clichés and intermittent boredom.
Towards the ending, the monologues are ridiculously "long" starting with the villains explaining their motives before their inevitable demise. This is identical to the final boss villains' overlong explanation why they do the things out of egotism and madness in old-school RPG video games like Final Fantasy. It ends with another monologue that summarize the title as the weight of the theme. Add some strange editing choice by returning hack editor Lee Smith that left me a little confounded. As usual, action scenes are rendered confusing in the midst of the violence.
I found Two-Face's "Fangoria gore" appearance a tad grotesque for a PG-13 rating, which is pushing it hard as the violence in Dark Knight is more intense, frequent and cruel. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the movie for the sake of violence but the level of violence (and gory with Two-Face's mangled half-moon face) is quite surprising that clearly isn't suitable for PG-13. I prefer the traditional appearance of Two-Face as originated in Neal Adams-drawn Detective Comics in the early 70's. The Two-Face as seen in Dark Knight is a glorified horror movie monster.
The Dark Knight is an alright movie, but severely overrated. It achieved number one on IMDb top 250, making it better than The Godfather, Wages of Fear, Citizen Kane and many obviously better-told and -directed movies despite the age. Young fanboys cannot be bothered to see these movies since their film appreciation education is limited to movies made in the last twenty years.
The Dark Knight is a vast improvement over the lame, poorly edited Batman Begins, owing to Heath's tour de force performance in spite of the story that suffers the similar flaws as Spider-Man 3 -- one villain too many and lecture-like speeches emotionally baiting the audience's jeers & sympathy for cheap thrills to conclude at the end.
*** out of 4
Post script: I saw the film for the second time on the afternoon of July 31. As noted criticizing the flaws for dragging the film towards the ending, I walked out of the screening just after two hours hit the mark (after the hospital blows up). I do not have to endure such tedium that extinguish the excitement as soon as Two-Face enter the picture. The Nolan brothers and story writer David Goyer intentionally padded the length of the movie to make it as "epic as Michael Mann's Heat", and this is what hurts the movie the most. I love long movies but this is not one of them -- it's plain exhausting and exasperating. Less is more, okay, David, Chris and Jonathan? Heath Ledger's fearless performance is worth watching however.