Good but not Great

Rating: 7/10 (3 August 2012)

I know what your thinking, 7 out of 10, sacrilege. But I cant help but feel that even with this score Im being overly generous.
*Spoiliers Follow*
Its been a couple of weeks now since I took a half day from work, under the pretences of a dead Granny, to go and watch the Dark Knight Rises. Instead of rushing straight into a review I decided to take my time to mull over what I saw and to analyse how I feel about the film. Sadly I feel disappointed. Don't get me wrong, DKR is far from a bad film. I thought it was good, I enjoyed it, I would recommend watching it. Its just not as good as the other two. Which is really hard for me to say because I really wanted this to be great. But its not, and its taken me a couple of weeks to pluck up the courage to admit that to myself. The actual story is fantastic, an ageing Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement to face off against a new threat in the form of Bane. A hulking, ruthless mercenary who has been building an army under Gotham. Cocky and brash, Batman underestimates his opponent, only to be beaten to a bloody pulp, broken and forced to watch from a prison cell as Bane sets about destroying the city. From here we watch as our Dark Knight builds himself back up and returns to Gotham to lead an all out street war with Bane and his army. Throw cat women, the league of shadows and a couple of other surprises into the mix and on paper this should be awesome. And I really cant fault the film for ambition. Nolan tries once again to raise the comic book movie beyond its pulp roots and deliver something truly epic. But unlike the Dark Knight it all just feels a little flat. The film suffers from major pacing issues. The first act is solid, the second drags and the third just feels rushed. The first 60mins of the film are excellent, charters are set up and reintroduced well, the set pieces are mind blowing and you develop a real sense of empathy for Bruce. By the time he comes face to face with Bane, things start to go down hill. Can I just say here that in my opinion, for all his technical brilliants Nolan just cant shoot hand to hand combat. Really. The scene where Bats comes up against Bane should have been crunching. I expected to see Hardy dish out the same controlled ferociousness that he did in Warrior or Bronson. I wanted them to build up Bane as an animal, as a powerhouse, I wanted to feel every Punch he landed. Instead it just looked a bit crap. But maybe thats just me. After this the film just got a bit boring. To much John Blake (who I didn't mind) and not enough Batman. Bane takes over the city and declares his own Marshall law. Gotham falls apart. But we don't really get to see it. One day everything is fine, its summer, people are going to watch football and then after a brief bit of hotel looting everything has gone to hell and its snowing. At least thats what it felt like for me. I would have loved to have seen a lot more of Gotham eating itself than Bruce Wayne doing press ups in a hole. I just realised that this review is pretty negative, so I should mention some of the good points. Hathaway's Catwoman is great, and all the better when you consider that there isn't really much for her to work with script wise. Bane is good, he's no joker, but he is still good. Gorden gets to shine which is always nice and the whole thing looks beautiful.
If you haven't seen it yet, do. Some of my friends thought it was the best of the bunch (they're wrong) but for me it just had to many plot holes, was badly paced and the fact that they don't even mention the joker annoyed me no end. I enjoyed it while it was on but I have no wish to see it again anytime soon. Which kind of makes me sad.