If this was just another action film with science fiction / comic book plot, it would have been adequate. It had the usual sequences of fights, explosions and just general mayhem.

The problem is that this film comes with an incredible amount of hype and one is kind of expecting it to deliver something really special. In this it fails. Oh, at 2 hr 32 minutes, it is also way too long.

Most of the critical praise goes to Heath Ledger's Joker and rightly so. He is by far the best performance in the film. He still does not compare to chilling performance given by Javier Bardem in "No Country for Old Men".

Bale's Batman is very disappointing. He comes across more like James Bond than Batman. Batman is a very dark character who is not that different from the people that he fights. For him the fight is personal. This does not come across in the film.

Probably my main complaint is the length and the pacing. The film is filled with many fast-paced action scenes but lacks progression. The story-telling does not take one on a journey as it should but rather one feels that the last fight scene or the last explosion is pretty much like the last one.

At 100-120 minutes, this would be a adequate forgettable film and I guess that I am penalising it more for the hype than anything else. It is, however, nowhere close to the really good films out there.