Distinctly average and surprisingly rather dull

Rating: 5/10 (24 April 2009)

It is odd to spend more than two hours watching a film and it slowly dawns on you that you are not particularly bothered how it ends and, if anything, rather wish it would end sooner rather than later. The Dark Knight is that kind of film. Exactly why I lost interest or even when, I'm not too sure, but lose interest I did. This is Christopher Nolan's second stab at Batman as well as Christian 'Rant' Bales, and although all the elements are there, it is simply not as good. Naturally, this being another slug, blast and punchfest - tho' despite it's reputation for being dark, thankfully not a bloodfest - many, many viewers have lauded this as a 'masterpiece', 'the best movie of 2008 so far', 'far surpasses Begins'. No, it isn't and no it doesn't. All I can say is that these people have not seen many 'masterpieces' or many films in 2008. The Dark Knight, in that way which Hollywood has made its sugary own, attempts to flatter the audience by including a 'moral dilemma' and it does so not once, but rather often. This time we are invited - the 'we' being the popcorn-chewing Saturday night crowd who think thought is a luxury - to reflect on moral ambiguity and how relative rather than absolute the notions of good and evil can be. And each time this viewer sighed a little: as the saying goes, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. We get any number of high falutin speeches about heroes and villains but, in truth, is just so much codswallop. In truth this film is just another blockbuster, and, at that, it is not even as good as many other blockbusters. If you want to meditate on the reality of good and evil, of heroes and villains, by all means make a film doing so, but in The Dark Knight it is all, for this viewer at least, all very phoney. Apart from that, this film is a tad confusing, there are too many characters, the plot, or at least what there is of it, really does not bear repeating, the suspense is curiously unexciting, and too often the film drags. The old actors are there, and all with the very honourable exception of the late Heath Ledger, seem to be acting by numbers. (This was, I think, Ledger's last film, and his early death is sad. Undoubtedly he was very talented.) And having said all that, there is not much more to say. It's not bad, it's not particularly good. As part of the series, it stands tall, but then the series is not all that outstanding. See it if you want to, and if, after reading this, you decide not to, well, sorry, but you won't be missing much at all.