The Joke's On Us

Rating: 7/10 (3 August 2008)

...for, simply put, this is to comic book/graphic novel adaptations what The Godfather, Part II is to gangster movies. Relentlessly dark, brooding, tangled, mythic, disturbing, none of that alternating, and then some. Long, too. It is neither uplifting nor a place to park the kids.
I devoured my share of comic books when much younger, and felt obliged but not compelled to sample their motion picture adaptations. In particular, no fan of the Batman series am I. Tim Burton aimed for weird and hit the target. Joel Schumacher aimed for Ken Russell and missed oh so wide. Christopher Nolan and company got the keys to the franchise and did something certifiably different. Hat's off for that.
In sum...
About a half-hour too long, and that final half-hour was action-packed befuddlement capped by not one but two unnecessary speeches that were effectively blotted out by that packed action.
Heath Ledger's performance will echo in your mind for some time to come. It had to have echoed in his own. Grant the man rest.
So will, or should, the performances of everyone else, most notably Aaron Eckhart and Gary Oldman for their respectively surprising turns of character.
With age Eric Roberts looks like Willem Dafoe, and Nestor Carbonell looks unnervingly like Peter Mark Richman.
I believe we're close to breaking the sound barrier of digital FX, where you don't appreciate them 'til they're hurled at you and can't appreciate them when you do.
I've heard my share of edited gunshots and explosions for the year and quite possibly the next two or three. But at least the violence wasn't stylized. If I wanted that I'd rent A Clockwork Orange.
What awards this film will win will be well and truly earned. All the same I can't guess where the franchise will go next. I sincerely hope it's left where it is, with the goal of applying the same considerable attention and resources to finding, learning, articulating and displaying something novel. The participants in this film are surely capable of all of that...