A Decent movie. Don't believe the hype

Rating: 6/10 (18 July 2008)

First of all I want to this movie has its good points. The Opening scene starts off very strong. But then this ends up being one of the most impact-full scenes featuring the joker. Throughout this movie I was waiting for that scene. A great dialogue scene between The Joker and Gordon. Or even one between Batman and Two-Face. But Most of the bad-guys didn't have enough dialogue to make them more than a 2-d thug.
I was also waiting for the film to build into a climax. Kind of like the first but it never happened. Both of the face off-s that batman had with both bad guys went no where. I kept drawing back to the Tim Burton movie, or as far as two face the cartoon, and remembering the great jobs they did with them. At the end of the original batman of course Jack Nicholson isn't going to put up a fight with batman. But his henchmen gave him problems, and when they didn't he would threaten batman's girl with acid. The end of this movie fizzles. They took a great premise with the ferry's, and at the expense of trying to make the movie realistic they made it very un-suspenseful.
Two other things that bugged me throughout were that editing and shooting around the action scenes. I never would get a sense of the whole scene or what was going on. The editing was really fast and from close shot to close shot. No long shots what so ever so we couldn't get a true sense of where the character where in relation to one another - AKA the underground car chase scene. Also Christian Bale's voice in the bat suit bugged me. But these are minor things compared to anti-climactic ending of the movie.
In conclusion this movie started big but didn't live up to the hype. And when I say the word HYPE I'm not referring to Heath Ledger. I'm referring to HYPE about the JOKER! One of the best bad guys ever created. It just seemed like they were caught between being scary and funny with the Joker which is a good place to be. But in that struggle I never felt scared for a second. Where as in past Batman stories I was truly scared that his schemes would work.