Yesterday, I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight, which looks like it's on pace to crack the $500 million dollar mark domestically.

To be honest, I went in wondering if the movie would live up to the hype and for the first 30 minutes of this 2 1/2 hour long flick, things seemed a bit slow.

But from there on out, this wasn't your parents' "Biff," "Boom," "Kaplow," Batman. To the contrary, the last two hours of the movie was violent, intense, and a dark thrill ride piloted by the late, great Heath Ledger who, in his final performance, turned the Joker into one of the greatest villains in cinematic history.

Additionally, for those that paid attention, there was definitely a message in there about the war on terrorism. Even though the Joker was chaotic, violent, and utterly without redeeming qualities, the people of Gotham started to treat the person doing the most to stop him, Batman, as if he were the real problem. Meanwhile, in the process, good people died, morals were tested, and the audience was left with no doubt that even though there were two sides to the fight, there was no moral equivalence between them.

That being said, this wasn't a perfect film. The first 30 minutes were poorly paced, there were some unnecessary scenes throughout the movie, and the fight sequences were very pedestrian. Still, because the Joker was such a great villain and because the movie was so intense, it's still fair to say this is, at a minimum, one of the 5 best super-hero movies of all-time. So, thumbs way up to The Dark Knight.