Shockingly, unexpectedly poor. Nolan's crown slipping ?

Rating: 5/10 (29 July 2012)

There are several reasons to watch this film but the bottom line is it simply does not deliver. Christian Bale has made a great Batman and continues to be very watchable. Anne Hathaway's Catwoman will surprise a few people as its difficult to see anyone else delivering the role so well. Caine, Oldman and Freeman are as dependable as ever and Tom Hardy's hulking bad guy Bane is as a vision of evil as he should be.
But, and its a big BUT, this film fails to deliver ultimately due to poor direction in the first half of the film. 2h 40min is a long film and surely a good 60 pages too long from a script perspective. This shows and is ultimately what makes this, dare I say it, a barely watchable end product. You could have slept through the first hour and would have finished up enjoying the film much more. Its just to damn SLOW. By the time the action gets going in the last hour I had simply turned off.
Yes there were great special effects. Yes there is a nice twist with Marion Coutillard's character which was a genuine noteworthy plot device. Yes Joseph Gordon Levitt illustrates why he is an actor sure to get quality leading roles as he comes into the golden ten or so years of a male actors career.
But its Christopher Nolan's meandering mis-direction in the first half that left me so thoroughly dis-interested in Dark Knight Rises. And as a fan of both Nolan and the various Batman franchises, the 'final' Batman should have been so much better.
Just as The Matrix would have been a far better film without the needless 2 sequels, the superb Dark Knight did not feed a follow-up.
Batman was already dead for all intents and purposes. Should have left the franchise on an all-time high rather than this 'lets make it because we can' effort rather than a 'make it because we should'.
Halesini