Joaquin Phoenix is terrific - the role is a fantastic one but not fool proof as Jared Leto indicated. Todd Phillips keeps Phoenix front and center as any Elvis Presley movie and is well rewarded.
The look of 1981 New York, sorry, Gotham, is convincing - bows to the art department - and I was gripped for a lot of this. A lot of it I was wishing I could take out my phone. It felt needlessly long. I did love how Thomas Wayne was a prick and even the butler Alfred was mean.
Two main gripes, one minor:
* the film started off feeling realistic but then as it went on felt less show - surely they would have vetted him more before going on a talk show? And I didn't buy everyone in clown masks praising him... that tends not to happen. Privately maybe but did, say, people rally around Lee Harvey Oswald? I think these things could have been fixed easily - you actually didn't need everyone running around praising Joker at the end, it would have worked fine with him being carted off and a lunatic fan then shooting the Waynes.
*a major gripe - the only people who are killed in the film deserve it. The mother who let her son be abused. Thomas Wayne who is horrible. The racist bullying gun happy clown. The yuppies on the train. The smug talk show host. If the film had shown someone nice and innocent being killed - the nice neighbour, her kid, one of his shrinks, a guest on the talk show, a member of the audience - then the movie would have been really grown up. But this is a Hollywood movie. And to be fair so was Taxi Driver where no one nice or innocent got killed either.
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