I will say up front that I have never seen a movie based on a comic book that I really liked, except the animated ones, or the quasi-animated, like _Sin City_. You would think the graphic novel and film would have a lot in common, but in the end they're trading in different kinds of images.

This is basically just another Batman movie. Same silly premise, that a super-rich hero battles --- over the shrinking remnants of Gotham city --- villains with seemingly unlimited resources in personnel and explosives.

I will agree that Heath Ledger's performance is amazing. Can this be the same guy who played the gay cowboy in that other movie? It is a real pity that he died. I can't help but thinking that if he were still alive, and we were wondering what he would do next with his great talent, this movie would not have an average rating of 9.0 (as of this writing).

There are a lot of other fine actors (Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine, for crying out loud) who are basically wasted pretending to take their characters seriously.

I did like the heist sequence at the beginning, including the Joker's first few lines and the bit with the bus. Really very droll; gets your hopes up. But, from then on, it's just a lot of people being blown up while the survivors emote angst --- dark, brooding, comic-book angst.