Beware of the Media

Rating: 7/10 (17 September 2008)

This is the best Batman film to be released, but lets not overdo it.
I can forgive a mainstream audience who believe Ledger should be given an Oscar and that this is the greatest film to ever be released, as these are often people who don't get out to the cinema much or don't hold a particular passion for motion pictures.
Ledgers death was the catalyst for the attention the film got, on top of its cult status and it being a summer blockbuster. However the media waggon definitely aided the box office numbers by mythologising the story behind the film, and with so much exposure there was almost a pressure for audiences to enjoy, love and cherish the latest in the Batman saga.
Indeed the most chilling and entertaining scenes involve the Joker. Batman is overshadowed. Harvey Dent is well portrayed and integrated into the story, with some decent acting by Eckhart. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman play themselves and add little to the spice of the film, if anything compromise it. If anyones to match Ledgers performance its Oldman's Gordon, who is terrific as always. Gyllenhaal looks good, thats all that matters.
The Joker is electric, Heath Ledger shakes off his heartthrob skin and effectively embodies the personality of a chilling psychopath, but I don't feel its worthy of an Oscar (He'll be nominated out of politics and pressure, but there are better candidates). The film revolved around The Joker, and his warped desire to prove the destructiveness of the human psyche (thats good) but Nolan thought rather pretentiously in my opinion to embed a few political messages into the film as a meagre way of making it a social realist experience as well as a rousing and intellectual tour de force, but he doesn't pull it off, and it looks tacky, these scenes which depict emotional moral dilemmas undermine the rest of the films fervour and quality. He includes subplots that meander off into nothing, and the whole package has holes and flaws, leaving you wishing those wasted moments had been used more effectively, like letting the Joker run rampage in a zoo or something. Too much is going, on and evidently the editing slacked in places. The film also needed to be cut an extra half an hour.
Why its still #3 in the 250 list is baffling. Its a fun movie, just not incredible.