Gotham In Ashes

Rating: 8/10 (21 July 2012)

(Spoiler Free): Filmmakers usually find trilogies hard to do. After you figure out what worked so well in the original and improve on it in the sequel there is not ever too many places to go. You have to be able to find a way to raise the stakes and tie up loose ends all in one movie. Thankfully this film is just good enough to join the ranks of its predecessors.
You can't really top the Joker, but when you move time forward and get an aged Batman and then match him against a strong physical and mental adversary and add in Catwoman on the side you come pretty close. The screen time given to all the characters in the last film was incredibly well balanced and co-operated with the strong pacing. This time the amount of characters aren't as well balanced and your left time to think and wonder where they are, which hurts the film quite a bit.
I admire the direction of this film being so ambitious. The scale and the massive size of Gotham as a city in conflict makes for a cool looking film that feels as big as it's supposed to be. As for performances, I really liked Tom Hardy as Bane. I thought he was an effective adversary whose performance was limited to his physicality in his movements and his chilling voice. Another very good performance came from Anne Hathaway. I was curious as to how she would figure into this universe (her inclusion was Jonathon Nolan's idea), and I'm happy to say this is the best Catwoman we've seen and the best Anne Hathaway performance I've seen.
My criticisms for the film are that the pacing needs work. There were some character's that were left in the dust or off screen for too long and some that weren't given enough. This all could have been edited but with the amount of time the director had I'm sure he did better than I could. The story feels like it fit into a major arc that was hidden in the past two films. It's very clever. There are some things thrown in there for audience satisfaction in the end that I thought were cheesy and unnecessary that hurt my enjoyment of the movie. They aren't too much a valid complaint so I'll leave you to decide as they are things that the producers probably added so that the audience finds the film an easier pill to swallow. Just a personal thought, but I won't ruin the review with it.
Don't read too much into this, as obviously you will go see this film yourself and decide. For a conclusion this is a solid piece of filmmaking that sits under the same roof as "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" if only a few floors down.
Overall Grade: +2 / B+