At a time when football players are looking to become actors, there’s an actor who possibly could be a football player.

We don’t know whether Christian Bale, who plays Batman on screen, can run fast or throw a ball or tackle large, sweaty men.  But he was arrested on Tuesday, so he at least has something in common with a segment of the players in the league.

Bale, 34, was busted for allegedly assaulting his mother and his sister.

And we fully recognize that this post deviates into the realm of the off-topic, but we’ve been looking for an excuse to share our thoughts on the greatest . . . movie . . . ever made, The Dark Knight.

Frankly, we didn’t like it.

It was way too long and, at times, it was way too slow.  The much-touted intelligence of the film was way too overt.

And maybe the chorus of critics, one of whom compared the thing to Michaelangelo’s David, gave us expectations that never could have been satisfied. 

Regardless, it felt like a laregly wasted three hours.  Bale’s lead character had an incredibly annoying old lady smoker’s voice when he was playing Bruce Wayne’s alter ego.  And, frankly, we doubt that there would be so much fawning over Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker if Ledger were still alive.

Ledger was very, very good.  But not nearly as downright-freakin’-piss-in-your-pants-creepy as Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men.

At one point, when Bale and Michael Caine, who played Alfred the Butler, were exchanging lines, we were reminded of a certain film featuring both men that was ten times better than The Dark Knight.  (A free one-year subscription to PFT goes to the first reader to name it.  And the second one.  And, well, all of them.  And the people who get it wrong.  And those who don’t make a guess at all.) 

What say you, PFT Planet?  Are we right on The Dark Knight, or are we just getting too damn old to know what’s good and what isn’t?