I liked the movie a lot and would have given it three paws. But just for Heath Ledgers performance alone I had to give it four paws.

A super-hero movie this good could have been even longer than 2 1/2 hours. Especially if the extra time would have made room for a more noteworthy entrance and exit for the Joker in order to expand his story. There was not much of a story arc for him, but he was equally fascinating to watch from his first moment to his last. "Who let the Joker out of his box?" someone in the film asks. And I wouldn't have minded seeing the box. Christopher Nolan did the same thing with Scarecrow and Ra's Al Ghul in Batman Begins. Given the overdone origin stories in previous Batman films, Nolan falls off the other side of the horse by giving us crazy people who did not become evil; they just are evil. It is fascinating how the Joker changes his story about the origins of his scars depending on who he is addressing. I was disappointed when Batman didn't let the Joker finish telling that final version. Given the progression of the first two versions of the Joker's tale, there is the hint of a suggestion that the Joker actually afflicted himself with his deformities. As fascinating as Ledger's Joker is to watch, we have no perspective of him as a character. And as awesome as Ledger is, we will never know what it would have been like to watch this role without the actor's death attached to it. But this film is also about someone named "Batman," who is getting short-changed in recent hype about the film. Batman gets an awesome new suit - one that lets him turn his head (so he doesn't have to use sonar to know what is behind him). He gets a new, slightly chubbier mask. His gravelly, THX-enhanced voice remains the same: a bit too death metal (I found his grunting contest with Two-Face almost laughable). Batman is much cooler when he is not trying to explain things. The action set-pieces are amazingly done. The film is short on digital animation. It shows Indiana Jones how shocking and exciting a spectacle like this can be with restrained CGI. The dank, grey, smoky, digital Gotham City from Batman Begins is traded in for a Gotham that is more pristine, brighter, more familiar, more corruptible. The action of this film takes place in realistically conceived space. See the rest of this review at http://braidedthreads.blogspot.com/2008/07/will-real-batman-please-stand-up.html

I'll be honest - I was worried that Heath Ledger's death had tainted some of the early reviews - it's hard to diss a dead man. I was greatly relieved when his performance actually made the movie. He was perfect.