A dark night for movie making

Rating: 4/10 (9 August 2012)

Although I am a fan of smaller scale, modest budget film making, I had reasonably high expectations of this film having read some promising reviews, but for me it was a real disappointment. After watching the unfolding enigma of Memento all those years ago I thought Christopher Nolan was an emerging director of potential genius, but sadly he is now reduced to filming over hyped blockbusters for Hollywood megabucks. He's not the first director to compromise his film making values, dribbling at the allure of Tinseltown's jewel encrusted carrot (stand up Peter Jackson), and he sure as hell won't be the last.
So then, what not to like....quite a lot in my eyes.
What bugged me most was the soundtrack. Sound in movies should supplement the visual spectacle to create atmosphere, drawing you in to the imagined world of the film by stimulating your visual and audio senses in tandem. TDKR however uses its soundtrack to fill an emotional vacuum created by the virtually non-existent character development, pushing and pulling you in dramatic directions that felt artificial as a result. How a film of 2hrs 44mins could not find time to develop even its central 3 or 4 characters is one of films biggest failures. As a result a stellar cast is reduced to acting by numbers, leaving the whole thing feeling very flat indeed. All this second rate film making might just have been pushed into the background if the film had a really good baddie but Bane was just a playground bully with a flaky back story and a weakness for casual genocide. The highlight of the whole movie for me was the sight of Hathaway's black clad buttocks astride the Batbike and I promise you i'm not normally that shallow.
A dark night for movie making indeed.