Overrated...not Batman

Rating: 4/10 (8 November 2012)

Well, it's been a few years, but I might as well warn future moviegoers.
This is the movie which so many critics and viewers raved about, yet I couldn't see what for. Let me explain:
I'll be brief because I don't want to reveal too much of the plot. The film is basically where the Joker sets out to corrupt the Batman and to prove that 'chaos is order' through death and destruction, and Batman goes to his limits to defeat him. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne goes through an emotional crisis as Rachel Dawes is now dating Harvey Dent, who later is scarred and becomes Two-Face. It sounds good like this, but it's not.
The two main leads are terribly irritating and not at all like the comic book and cartoon versions. Instead of a deformed, conniving, sinister clown, the Joker is a painted emo who preaches about chaos while he senselessly murders people to no apparent aim except to cause that Batman turn to the dark side. I'm not sure if his plan was to pretend to be crazy so that he could conquer the crime syndicate, because it never clearly states any actual goal of his. He acted like some generic psycho, not the real Joker, and I could get ten times better on Criminal Minds.
Meanwhile, the Batman is constantly whining about how terrible his life is, and pining after Rachel, and several rushed scenes leave it ambiguous as to whether he wants to be Batman or not. It seems to be a poor rehash of Spider-Man 2, which did this story-line much better. The Batman is the one character in the superhero universe who sacrifices personal relationships for justice more than any, so this is an inherent contradiction of his character. The worst part of all this, though, is that he actually believes some of the Joker's moronic pseudo-philosophy, and acts as if he will somehow be exactly like the Joker and go around murdering people needlessly if he kills him. Really, though, Gotham would be better off if the Joker died, yet the Batman saves him even though, in the final fight, killing him is in self-defense. I didn't get any sense of the bitter rivalry between the two.
The rest of the movie doesn't fare well, either. Harvey only becomes Two-Face later on in the second half, after the mob deforms him and kills Rachel. The Joker is responsible, of course, yet, he goes after a few corrupt cops and then Gordon's family. They give no back story to him or reason for his actions, and he is killed off accidentally by Batman. Plus, the love triangle angle is never fully developed anyway (although, because I never really liked her, I wasn't sad when Rachel died). Sal Maroni is a minor secondary villain, but gets more involvement than Alfred or Lucius (they're just minor roles here). Gordon is the only consistent and interesting character in the whole movie.
The film is too dark (literally, because everything's in shadows), and the actions scenes, while sometimes good, are hard to see, and seems misplaced anyway. He travels to China to capture a mobster who's not really important, and destroys half of Gotham in a pointless chase scene. The Joker magically seems to be able to blow up bridges, a hospital and ferries, and hack into television broadcasting, without notice and with unlimited resources, but his acting makes this all too unbelievable. His idiotic master plan is to rig two ferries with explosives and see who blows who up first, and the Batman defeats him by magnetizing the city's cellphones to track him. And, in the end, the Batman pretends to be responsible for Harvey's crimes after the latter's death so that the Joker's doesn't win the battle for Gotham's soul (although he and Gordon commit corruption, so the Joker does win, anyway). The musical score is fine, but it's the same one from the last film.
All in all, it's just boring and dull. All the philosophy was nonsense, and felt forced. They just used the Batman franchise to sell a film which would otherwise be panned by critics (so why it wasn't, I don't know). I don't recommend that you don't watch, but don't be sucked in by all the hype.