A More than Fitting End to this Film Series Juggernaut

Rating: 10/10 (20 July 2012)

I'm a die-hard Batman fan and, at best, Luke-warm Burton/Keaton fan. The Nolan/Bale franchise was a welcome change in terms of what I see in Batman as a character. In this installment of that series, Bruce Wayne suffers enough guilt after the deaths of Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes that he has been living a Howard Hughes lifestyle for the eight years that followed "The Dark Knight." He finds himself needing to get back into the game when a new threat enters Gotham city--a greater threat to him personally than he has ever confronted before. His ultimate struggle becomes that he has to pick himself up from rock bottom so he can save Gotham from its big threat.
The movie pulls from several great Batman stories, including "The Dark Knight Returns," "Knightfall," and "No Man's Land", and at the same time reminds us of historical events like the recent "Occupy Wall street" and even the French Revolution. It delves into the entire moral spectrum, where the good guys have to find their ethical core, while bad guys never even stop to consider theirs.
Christian Bale nails it as the conflicted Bruce Wayne, and the menacing Batman, while Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Morgan Freeman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy all deliver in spades in their respective roles in a monstrous and powerhouse plot. This is one for the ages.