Wake up, people.

Rating: 6/10 (4 February 2009)

Let me preface this by saying that the dark knight is a good movie.
Unfortunately, that's all it is. Not excellent, not a masterpiece by ANY means, and anyone who tries to tell me this movie's a CLASSIC, save your breath. This flick's a summer blockbuster and nothing more.
let me start out with the good parts: Heath Ledger and Michael Caine. Both actors brought good things to the table and prevented the movie from being just dismally bad. When I first saw Ledger was to be cast as the Joker, I was disappointed; I guess I'd been hoping for someone different. What a sleeper he turned out to be. Unfortunately, Ledger essentially carried the film. He was the one strong performance among the leads. Some aspects of Ledger's Joker were downright creepy, creative, and most importantly, convincing. Props to you Heath, you were quite a talented actor. Michael Caine as Alfred was as good as he was in Begins, but he's a pretty minor character which is a shame.
I'm pretty neutral about Morgan Freeman, he did a good enough job, but could've been better, which leads me to my next point: the script. What an awful piece of trash this was. The script was the reason why Lucius could've been better; it certainly wasn't Freeman's fault. The lines were flat, the storyline was contrived, and there were plot holes en masse. I think the Joker's lines were OK, as they fit with Ledger's portrayal of him. It was a shame, then, that the writing for Batman, Bruce, Dent, Gordon, and Lucius was completely flat.
I think what irked me most about the movie was Two-Face's role. It didn't work in the film at all. It almost seemed as though two face had been some kind of afterthought. Dent was all well and good, but two face was in the movie for all of 25 minutes, and killing him off at the end was mind-bogglingly stupid. Two-Face had such potential, especially for the 3rd movie, and the character was a complete failure.
More plot holes than you can shake a stick at. Everything went like clockwork for the Joker, from the bank robbery to the interrogation to the jailbreak to the mayor to the hospital. It's all WAY too easy. The story isn't coherent at all and was also too complex. I could have done without about half the minor characters.
Nevertheless, none of that stuff really bothers me nearly as much as this: people are calling it a 'masterpiece' and a 'classic' and 'timeless'. That last one really gets me. What are you, stupid? this movie embodies none of those words. Wake up, people. Check back with me in 25 years and if it's still #5 I'll give it some thought. For Christ's sake, it topped the chart for like 2 months! that to me is just obscene. Tell me that it's better than Casablanca, Seven Samurai, Goodfellas, a Clockwork Orange, Rear Window, Seven, and Apocalypse Now and try keeping a straight face. In a perfect world, TDK wouldn't even be on the top 250, but I'll be happy when it gets below #150. Read: 'when', not 'if'.