Cold and mechanical, it doesn't really capture the essence of Batman

Rating: 6/10 (27 December 2012)

The first thing I noticed about this film is how mechanical and cold and methodical Christopher Nolan has shot it. I think some of his previous films have shown he has a tendency towards being kind of dispassionate, but here the whole thing feels rushed as well, which just exaggerates those bad qualities and has some good actors delivering poor performances.
Nolan's not really an artist in the classic sense, he's more of a skilled assembler - is everything in place? right, shoot it, let's move on to the next scene. All completely dispassionate, even in the death of a major character like Talia. You get that with the script as well. It needs to move from A to B and C, but it moves mechanically, with little thought to character motivation and with little style or flair.
Nolan's really like anti-Tim Burton, so it's so strange to have these two competing Batman series. With Burton everything's dramatic and creative and wild and fantastical, while Nolan keeps it all mired in the cold, rationalist, real world. There's something here to appreciate in the way he has constructed this modern crime thriller, but as the trilogy progresses it just felt less and less like it truly captured the essence of Batman.
There are ideas at work here - while Nolan can't inject all that much imagination and creativity and he certainly can't inject fun, he can inject ideas - but those ideas are about the modern, godless world of politics and power and morality and terrorism - I'm not sure a Batman film is the place to get hopelessly tangled up in this kind of social commentary.
And I'd have to say the last film is by far the worst of the three - the machine still works and all the pieces are in place and in the correct order, but it's clearly a bit of a rush job.
Despite being about an incredibly rich and imaginative character like Batman, there's a lack of escapism and fantasy here. Batman is a little bit fantastical, he's a little bit Gothic, a little bit Romantic. But none of these elements are of interest to Nolan, nor feature in his socio-political psychodrama.
Batman has been handled better in the past and I think Nolan was at his best in the first movie, when it really was just an enjoyable and fairly unpretentious modern take on Batman.