I completely agree. If I hadn't read your review before seeing the movie, I would've expected some sort of bribe to be handed to Harvey Dent by Eric Roberts's character in the second half of the film. No one in the entire courtroom reacts when the gun is pulled out! No time for reshoots?

The movie was too long, but I liked it. I didn't think it suffered from “villainitis” like “Spider-Man 3″ or the three Batman movies that came out in the '90s, but a friend of mine noted that Harvey Dent probably had more screen time than Bruce Wayne/Batman if you counted up their scenes. Ledger was scary and funny, but am I the only one who thought he licked his chops a little too much? It lost its potency after a while.

To me the biggest acting disappointment was Maggie Gyllenhaal. Her voice made her sound like a college intern, not an assistant DA. When she was cast, people thought she'd be a big improvement over Katie Holmes, but I didn't think there was much of a difference. Granted, “The Dark Knight” is a boys' club, and the Rachel Dawes character isn't that well-defined to begin with, but I still expected something more from Gyllenhaal.

To me, a central theme ended up being that there's always information in this life that You Just Can't Handle. Someone always keeps you in the dark. Gordon nanny-states the city as police commissioner, Batman keeps Two-Face to himself, Alfred keeps Batman in the dark about Rachel. (I didn't follow the comic: wasn't Two-Face supposed to be a nemesis that more people realized was a nemesis? And since when is Batman an enemy of the citizens of Gotham?) Oh well.