by Henry Daniels

Created on: July 18, 2009   Last Updated: August 24, 2009

Health Ledger's portrayal of "The Joker", while sometimes fascinating, contains serious flaws that did not merit the Academy Award nod that should have been given to either Philip Seymour Hoffman or Robert Downey Jr.

The most annoying aspect of Ledger's performance is the Joker's incapability of feeling any pain. Not once, during all the punishment that the Joker takes in this movie at the hands of Batman and the Gotham police department, is he ever affected by anything that happens to him! Take, for example, the famous interrogation scene:

The Joker taunts Batman with the disappearance of Rachel. Batman then proceeds to take Ledger and smash him against the table. The Joker laughs ... hmm. Laughter? That's weird. Usually the reaction to something like that would be screaming in pain, but, uh ... OK, maybe it wasn't as hard a slam as the film let on. He then taunts Batman further. Enraged, Batman takes the Joker and slams him by the head into a two way mirror. Glass flies everywhere. The Joker continues to laugh, seemingly unaffected. He continues to taunt "you've got nothing to threaten me with". This happens again and again ... hold the phone. It is not possible at all, not in any conceivable way, for someone to take that punishment and still seem unfazed and unharmed. It's simply not possible, and yet none of this registers at all with Ledger. His Joker is painless. He does not need stitches, there's aren't any glass fragments in his head, he does not get hurt ... he kicks the crap, five minutes later, out of a police officer and then escapes the police station, ecstatically sticking his head out of a moving copcar window.

What baloney. What actor wouldn't have the sense to reflect his character's sense of physical hurt during this scene? Nothing is more present, during the acting process, than one's body. Actors are physical creatures. They use and interpret sense to maintain a grasp on everything that they think and feel. Here is a scene where, clearly, they supplanted a body double to take the fall and then cut back to Ledger who I guess was unaware that his character is getting the crap kicked out of him. These kind of villains are the most annoying. They are so smug that, apparently, they cannot be hurt.

Then of course there's the moment where the truck The Joker is driving is flipped over and, seconds later, he gets out and straightens himself out as though he hadn't been in a accident that would have paralyzed or killed pretty much anyone who

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