Good, but not a masterpiece

Rating: 6/10 (23 July 2008)

I was surprised by the very high ratings this film has in IMDb. Movie critics generally rated this sky high as well. The matter is, this movie has some fine action scenes (though far from the best you will see in a movie theater) but it is also ridiculously and relentlessly serious. Maybe this has to do with me growing up with the campy Adam West TV series, but, come on, how can a movie be so somber, solemn and humorless when, at the end of the day, the story is about a guy wearing a bat suit. The performances are so so; Bale and Eckhart are OK, Caine and Oldman are underused, Gyllenhaal fails to make an impression. As the psychotic Joker, the late Heath Ledger is genuinely scary, though the constant facial tics makes one wonder if he wasn't under the influence of illegal substances when he was performing (Ledger died of a drug overdose). And a lot of the plot just doesn't make sense (how the Oldman character was able to save his life, what happened with Eckhart and the Joker in the hospital, how the Joker is able to plot so many things all alone, almost always being one step ahead of the police). While I would recommend this, I just can't call it a masterpiece.