Let me first start off by listing the good parts of the movie:

 Heath Ledger

Chicago

 Alright then, now that we have that out of the way, lets get on to the entirety of the rest of this pile of trash.

 When watching this movie one can't help but be reminded of its predecessor, Batman Begins, a movie which takes us down the path of Batman's origins and the struggles therein. But that's the real point in this, the first movie actually told a coherent story from point A to point B, in a very smooth and pleasant fashion. This movie on the other hand, does not.

 Less than half way into the film, I started to feel like the editors were maybe doing a lot of cocaine, or being geeks themselves, drank way too much Mountain Dew and in a jittery flash of inspiration decided to not give the viewers any longer than 30 seconds before cutting to something else with lots of light and flashes and raised eye brows, no shadows and strange dialogue.

 Which brings me to the story…what story? Because the pacing had to be quick, because they decided to cram so much garbage into this movie, because they were forced to make every quick cut, to every short scene absolutely vital, it became a stream of talking heads giving the exact dialogue needed to lead to the next rushed scene change. Here's an example:

 Gordon gets shot and killed.

Cut.

Batman is sitting there looking sad at Gordon's wife.

Cut.

Batman is suddenly in a night club beating guys up.

Cut.

Some explosion and the Joker gives us a few lines for just long enough to keep us interested.

Cut.

Alfred saying something witty.

Cut.

Morgan Freeman…and another one liner.

Cut.

What did Batman say again?

Get my point? Literally for the length of time it takes to show us the scene where Bruce merrily shuts down the "bat cave" for good, do we then see him back on the streets as Batman as if nothing had happened a few minutes earlier.

 It felt as if there might have been three movies going on at once: a possible messy love triangle between Rachael, Harvey and Bruce, the "struggle" between the Joker and Batman, and what kind of person he needs to become in order to take down a criminal like that, and then Two Face shows up and starts chewing on a baby...

 For moments I wasn't sure if Heath Ledger and Christian Bale were even in the same movie. The Joker kills Rachael, "kills" Gordon, and mutilates Harvey, and all we get is a solemn scene in cool low light with Bale, a few sweaty lines, and Michael Caine saying something witty and brilliant like always. But that's it, that's all we get. Batman is predictable, linear, and is suddenly no longer a rooky, but has turned into James Bond, and seems to be so single minded in everything he does, that it takes the suspense right out of all the scenes which could have been good (like the interrogation scene with the Joker for instance).

 There is a definitive part at the end where the Joker is hanging upside down after being captured, and Batman has just uttered some inaudible line of dialogue after looking like he might want to take a bite out of something, the Joker says something which sums this movie up nicely, "This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets and immovable object…" Ledger is this giant force of an actor delivering an amazingly unstoppable performance, and yet he keeps running into the immovable stubbornness of a bad editorial team, a convoluted script, and the other supporting cast which isn't allowed to give us what we were not only promised, but got in the first film.

 But what tops it all was Harvey Dent. This movie was over for me when I saw Two Face. What was great about the first movie was that it kept itself in the realm of the possible. Switch to this film, which kind of starts to stretch things a bit until the end and Harvey shows us his giant unblinking, uncovered, still-able-to-see, eye ball, and it made me want to shut the thing off right then and there. The man was a walking infection and wouldn't have made it very far, let alone kill some cops for no reason other than to make the story more complicated.

 The Dark Knight is, in my mind, an almost bigger flop than Transformers. I say this because Transformers never really had a chance, it was never preceded by a brilliant first rendition, it didn't have a single good actor in it, and the entirety of the story was just rubbish from the start. The Dark Knight on the other hand, had the exact opposite, and took a big shit on everything it could have done, and should have been.

 Well…except for Heath Ledger…but he's dead now.