I enjoyed the movie.

My only complaint is that it was vastly different from the comic book. So I look at it as a sort of "Elseworlds" Batman story, where it was very well done, but not the characters I recognize.

To me it was more like an episode of Law and Order than a typical Batman movie. Focused on crime, politics, and fielding the media, while trying to capture and hold the criminals, rather than fanciful superhero costumes and gadgets. Most of Batman's gadgets were like military hardware, for fighting a one-man war. Extremely violent, for a Batman movie.
And in some ways reminded me of the movie Collateral (with Tom Cruise as a philosphical hit-man), with its exploration of good and evil, and human nature and motivation.

The Joker was misanthropic, out to prove that people could be driven to any evil, particularly murdering each other, to save themselves. He tells the city in a broadcast that if they kill one man, he won't bomb the entire city. He tells people on two ferry boats that if one blows up the other, that they will be spared. It was very timely in that the Joker is reinvented as a bomber-terrorist. And beyond psychological warfare, bombing people is his only power.

I'd love to have Usama Bin Ladin watch this movie, and after wonder if he, too, Joker-like, is the embodiment of senseless evil.

I still question the choice of Christian Bale as Batman, which I consider a weak link in the movie, especially his Clint-Eastwood-like whispered lines as Batman, presumably to disguise his voice, which just sounded silly to me.
But I still love Bale's performance in two earlier roles, Spielberg's 1988 movie Empire of the Sun(as a W W II prisoner of the Japanese in Hong Kong, where Bale wasn't even in puberty yet, and thus unrecognizable to how he looks now) and his role in the 1993 movie Swing Kids.
Michael Caine as Alfred is one of my favorite touches.


The others I thought all gave good performances.
It was about as realistic as you could make a Batman movie.