plot is illogical, aesthetic uninspired, casting poor, acting sloppy, editing rushed, and larger themes unconvincing

Rating: 1/10 (1 August 2009)

The Dark Knight's extreme popularity must be due to saturation advertising, hype, the popularity of the Batman franchise, and a star-studded cast. Looked at objectively, it fails on a number of levels.
SPOILER WARNING: This comment talks extensively about the plot of the movie.
A) The script is full of illogical events. 1) Batman jumps out of a window on the 50th floor to rescue Rachel, catches her, and smashes with her onto a car in the street below, and they both walk away unscathed, despite the fact that no parachutes were deployed and no wings broke their fall. 2) The Joker somehow fills large places throughout the city with large oil canisters full of explosives, with no one seeing, including Gotham's largest hospital and two ferry boats, after advertising that these places would be targeted. 3) Midway through the movie, the white knight of justice, District Attorney Harvey Dent, does a 180 degree turn when his girlfriend is killed and becomes a psychotic killer, for no reason whatsoever. 4) Early in the movie, the Joker goes on a rampage and then makes demands and the entire city clamors not for his defeat but for all his demands to be met. 5) Dogs can bite through the bulletproof bat suit. 6) Two Rottweilers can take down and immobilize Batman. 7) The Joker can singlehandedly overpower Batman without any weapons. 8) The police act as buffoons throughout the movie: they put the Joker in a cell with other prisoners; interrogate him without handcuffs; let him out of the interrogation room when he takes the interrogator hostage; and give him a cell phone to use, which he then uses to trigger an explosion in the building that kills everyone but, miraculously, him. 9) The Joker drives alongside a police caravan and systematically picks off one police car after another with a bazooka, and the police continue driving along at the same plodding pace. 10) Batman shoots at the Joker and fights him and flips his 18-wheeler truck, but when he is about to hit the Joker with his motorcycle, he crashes it instead and puts himself at the mercy of the Joker in a fit of GI Joe morality. 11) Morgan Freeman objects to Batman's cell phone mapping technique, saying "Too much power for one man", and resigns as his assistant, despite Batman's lifelong pursuit of lawless vigilantism.
B) Aesthetically the movie is unimaginative and uninspiring. 1) Batman as a fighter is stiff. His suit is like a slab of sheet metal welded together. His movement is the opposite of the smooth, flowing martial artist one sees in classic samurai or judo movies. Batman arrives without stealth, by smashing through windows into hails of gunfire, and departs in a similarly unstealthy manner. This is the opposite of how a ninja would behave: with intelligence, grace, simplicity, and secrecy. Similarly, the Batmobile smashes through reinforced concrete walls and sits still to absorb a hail of gunfire. The Batman envisioned here -- smashing everything in his path, and indestructible -- is more like the Incredible Hulk than a bat. 2) Set design is drab. The scene in the kitchen, of the conference of mafiosi, is plain, uninspired, and unimaginative. The parking garage scene is aesthetically dull. The bat cave is quite plain -- just a long, empty room with a low, internally lit ceiling, without any gear whatsoever.
C) The casting is poor and the acting uninspired and sloppy. 1) Morgan Freeman is a dreadful choice. His acting and presence is like the feel-good music that often accompanies his scenes. Just play the music and skip him. 2) Aaron Eckhart relies too much on his good looks and smile and not enough on acting. He sounds like a motivational speaker -- that is, a liar -- trying to convince, but unconvincing. His body language in the scene on top of the building is very fake: amateur-aggressive. 3) The actor playing Commissioner Gordon is about as good as a director standing in for an actor who couldn't make it to rehearsal. He has no energy or presence on screen. I appreciate understatement in acting, but he seems to be half asleep and mumbles his way through his lines. 4) Maggie Gyllenhaal is unconvincing as the object of desire of both heroes. 5) The black mafia boss is terrible. The other mafia bosses are not much better: overacting without direction or intelligence. 6) The man who turns from a meek bank supervisor to a tough vigilante in the first scene is too self-conscious, and his transition is unbelievable. He is too recognizable as an "actor". 7) The acting by extras is very bad and poorly directed. When the Joker says "half", the chorus of laughter is like that in a high school musical. The same unanimity of action is found at the press conference. The thugs in the parking garage seem like models, not thugs.
D) The editing is too fast; transitions are largely dispensed with altogether. 1) There is no pause before the cut to the trial; dialogue from the two scenes runs together. 2) The scene at the benefit party is unconvincing: Bruce Wayne drops the models immediately, people applaud immediately, it's over. Scenes are too fast and perfunctory.
E) In its larger themes, the movie proves to be just as illogical and perplexing as in its minutest details. The end of the movie carries this message: "Sometimes the truth isn't good enough ... Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded." This is used to justify the creation of a myth of Harvey Dent as "Savior Of Gotham", and to explain the need for making Batman the fall guy for all of Dent's crimes. However, the movie makes no attempt to explain why Dent, the psychopath, should be eulogized and not Batman, the hero. The writer floats a thesis about the human need for myths on a raft of unpersuasive evidence.