A Very Mediocre Film, Period

Rating: Null/10 (20 July 2012)

Whatever pre-judgments I had made about this film I checked at the door and watched it in hopes of enjoying a great film. Unfortunately, most will agree with me and admit this is not a great movie. The positive is that the storytelling is excellent and it does tie together the entire trilogy nicely. The emotion is there at times, especially every scene with Alfred.
Still, that merging of all three films is also a negative. Using past development and arcs doesn't bother me at all. If you didn't see the other films then you have no business expecting to enjoy this film on a high level. What does bother me is that everything seemed telegraphed and that's just weak writing in my opinion. The logic flaws about Bane's whole master plan and how it was executed are blatant. What also detracts from the film for me is the fact that Batman does NOTHING but ride his bike once and get his ass kicked real bad for the first two hours of the film. Even after that, there are no action sequences or scenes of merit. It seems the idea was to make Batman the least appealing character on display (having him do little or nothing for the entire film) and making the movie about Bruce Wayne. Great artistic concept but it comes across as weak.
Even though TDKR is filled with logic flaws, the "surpise twists" are easy to spot and it's thematically over-ambitious, I still found myself interested in the story. Not a bad film by any stretch but unless you're a big fan going in I don't see how anyone will call this anything but mediocre to solid.