Just saw it yesterday and loved every bit. Maaaybe the Two-Face bit at the end was too much, they could've saved it for the next film, but whatever I wouldn't mind sitting there even if it was even longer.
Now, about Bale, I disagree with most you guys; I had enjoyed his Batman in the first one, and in this one I also liked him a lot. If anything he should've gotten more screen time, but that's not really Bale's fault.
Harvey Dent was a difficult guy for me to judge, not because Eckhart does a bad job - he's also brilliant -, but because I was already expecting him to turn into this "bad guy", so throughout most of the film were he was a "good guy", I didn' believe him
Nevertheless, fantastic performance and I hope they didn't kill him.
About Ledger, what can I say? First of all, I never understood why people needed to compare it to Nicholson's. That Joker was an older, more classy-like, mobster villain. Ledger's character is a completely over-the-top, lunatic, hallucinated, wreckless villain. I mean, Nicholson's was a fantastic Joker in its style, but I personally think Ledger impersonates the idea I had of the Joker much better. Still, I'm not saying one or the other is better because there's no ground of comparison. What is true is that Ledger pulls out one of the greatest(if not the) performances in this genre, maybe even of villains of every genre, of all time. There is no arguing, even if he's dead or not(Alex...), that this guy deserves at least a nomination.
Finally, what I liked most about the first film is still there, which are the fantastic supporting characters; Caine, Freeman, Oldman, Gyllenhall or Eric Roberts, hell even William Fichtner at the beggining is great. They all wrap up the story so well that it's impossible
not to like this movie.
