(No Spoilers!) A worthy end of a fantastic trilogy

Rating: 8/10 (23 July 2012)

Well, the first thing to report is that it is good. No doubt about that.
It is overall a very satisfying end to the trilogy (apart from a few points aside which I'll mention later) and it feels a lot more epic and important socially than The Dark Knight. However, it is far from perfect and somehow manages at the same time to be thrilling, powerful and yet clunky and pretentious. I'll go into more detail later as far as the lack of spoilers will allow.
Well, let's start off with the huge successes of the film (which there are a lot of). Firstly, it looks and sounds incredible, from the use of light and shadow. Wally Pfister outdoes himself, the use of colour leaps out after so much of the film being in darkness. The sound work too is inspired, Hans Zimmer may not have the Pavlovian, dread-building piece to herald Bane as he did the Joker but the music is soaring and impressive (if a little OTT in places). The chant you hear throughout the film ends up acting in the way. It works extremely well. Bane's voice is FANTASTIC, (you still need to pay attention in some parts) the off-mechanical tint lets enough emotion come through but it really works.
In Bane, Tom Hardy shows off his ability to project himself through physical movement and his eyes alone. Having the mask over his face stop him from being able to act in a traditional method but at times Bane is fierce, aggressive, imposing and whilst some part of that is due to the fact he is hench as anything, it mostly comes from his physical movements and actions. Added to this is the fact that he is very smart, his overall plot is a masterfully nasty affair.
Anne Hathaway as Selena Kyle is another victory for the film. My initial hesitation about the casting gave way almost immediately. She is fantastic, a sultry, seductive, clever morally ambiguous character. Everything the character could and should have been she was. I was hugely impressed.
On top of this you find the emotional core of the core being carried in three supporting characters. Gary Oldman's James Gordon, the Police Commissioner who has a much larger and more important role this time around. Joseph Gordon Levitt's earnest, hotheaded police officer John Blake, personifying the ideals that Bruce Wayne and James Gordon had before the Joker. Finally, you have the powerhouse that is Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne's heartbreakingly faithful butler, to be honest, it is Caine that steals the show. Just awe inspiring.
Even Christian Bale's Batman/Bruce Wayne, who, to be honest I usually find less interesting than other characters is at his peak here. His character is put through his paces in this film in ways that the first two films never even dreamt of and the overall character progression and evolution means that as the third act of the film kicks in, there is so much more to Bruce Wayne/Batman than was touched upon in either Batman Begins or The Dark Knight.
The film is long but unlike The Dark Knight, where I felt it started to lose pacing towards the end of the film with the introduction of Two-Face disrupting the breakneck narrative speed of the Joker, in this film the first hour or so is pretty slow to start. There are loads of new characters and developments since The Dark Knight and the first part of the film deals mostly with them and it is actually quite a while before Batman himself appears. The prologue of the film (like The Dark Knight) deals with the villain, an introductory piece and I must say that Bane's opening scene is utterly brilliant in every way.
Once the film starts to gain momentum, it does not stop. Building on itself towards a huge and impressive final act. The size, scope and direction of the film as more starts to happen is a masterful display of direction. The second act in particular is when the film really starts to draw you in with expert skill.
Now for the not-so-good.
It is not a subtle film. At all. The parallels between events in this film and real life are so obvious and it ends up being (whether intentional or not) quite political and as such will end up dividing the audience between sympathisers and those unimpressed.
You end up feeling that the film nails individual characters and their motives but the larger social movements are painted with the broader brush with nowhere near the same level of intelligent detail.
There are also occasional irritating pieces of scripting, often where characters would state the obvious for the benefit of reminding the audience of what's going on but since the rest of the film treats the audience as intelligent, these occasional (and it is only two or three) lines do stand out as being clunky compared with the overall streamlined script.
There's also a bit near the end which is COMPLETELY unnecessary. Really, you'll know it when you watch it and you'll agree it's utterly not needed.
However, gripes aside. This film completely succeeds as a powerful and satisfying end to the trilogy, bringing in plots, themes and images from the previous two films to give this a grand sense of scale whilst never forgetting that despite all of the emotion, it is the spectacle that matters. Every character is developed perfectly and acted to the same standard. It should not disappoint you at all. A worthy end to the trilogy and a high standard for superhero films afterwards.