Still no Dark Knight

Rating: 7/10 (31 July 2012)

To me, what made Dark Knight so mesmerizing was Heath Ledgers performance of The Joker. Without Heath, the movie still would have been a very good film (due to the amazing action stunts, fast paced story and awesome soundtrack) However Heath's contribution to the film amplified its power and perhaps doubled the movies appeal. With Heath missing from this movie Tom Hardy has big shoes to fill and in my opinion doesn't pull it off.
This is not his fault at all. No man could have filled the void of The Joker. But Tom did an excellent portrayal of Bane and played a real good villain. The movie starts off slow and I personally don't mind that. I thought it was very appropriate not to introduce Batman within the first hour of the film. The movie's story line overall was very well written. Some of the twists were well written while others were extremely predictable. I know it's not always avoidable but it kills the movie when you can guess a plot twist from a mile off. And there's a couple of these in the movie that killed the suspense.
Another thing that disappointed me were all the plot holes. And there's many. Batman Begins started out as a re-imagining of Batman in a realistic universe and Dark Knight continued this style. Dark Knight Rises however doesn't and instead leans to a more comic book style rather than a realistic one (Banes underground lair, Batman and Catwoman fighting side by side and unrealistic scenarios and plot holes) Examples of these plot holes are: Bruce's seemingly broken leg is fixed by a gadget in mere seconds later he can shatter bricks with a single kick. Another would be Bruce escaping the Lazarus Pit and making his way to Gotham (In such short time) and somehow getting into Gotham despite all bridges to Gotham being destroyed and getting into his bat cave only to meet Gordon on the ice without managing to fall through despite all the armor he's wearing. These are just some examples of the plot holes that took my head out of the movie and killed it. A lot of people have ignored these flaws. But for me these flaws not only tarnish the movie but make it inconsistent with the first two.
But despite the flaws the movie is still entertaining and has a very satisfying ending to a brilliant trilogy. Definitely worth while watching.