An impartial review

Rating: 7/10 (13 August 2012)

I am not a fan of Nolan's Batman franchise. I think he made the superhero too emo and angsty in general and glamorizes the villains too much. I think his movies are lacking what makes comic books comic books- the grain of comedy that comes from clever one-liners and the heroes ability to laugh at themselves. In other words, this batman takes himself way to seriously for a man swinging around in a costume playing vigilante. That said, I am not a hater of the franchise low- balling the ratings just to hurt its standing. I am being fair and honest in my review of the title so those who read this review can decide for themselves whether they want to see it or not.
This movie is entertaining. I did find myself interested in what happened next. The action moved along at a good pace and the story unwound in a timely matter. There were only two places it dragged on a little. The first was Batman's first fist fight with Bane. It just lasted too long, the audience started to get restless and whisper and fidget. The same thing happened again when Batman was hauling the bomb out over the bay in his new flying machine. It was several minutes of watching him fly over the bay without any real tension to make us anxious. We knew he would make it away from the city or there would be no point to the movie. So why have us standing there gazing after him for so long. If the audience in theater gets restless enough to rustle, the timing is off.
There were far too many very dark scenes. Movie makers think it is artistic to shoot in full dark or dark lit only by a fireplace or a strategically placed blue light. It may be artistic but it is annoying to the watcher who is peering at the screen trying to make out what is happening. Hearing is not enough. Unless it is a monster movie and something is going to jump out of the darkness at us, we want to see what is going on. We have no way of knowing if the sex scene was hot or romantic or even boring because we didn't see anything but the occasional flash of fire lit skin.There were other places in the movie too where the screen was so dark we just had to guess what was going on.
Bane's diction was probably the worst problem with the movie. They made Bane talkative and gave him a rather cultured sounding way of speaking totally out of keeping with the comic book Bane. Then they slapped on the mask. Muffled is a kind way to put it. People were whispering and asking their seat mates what he just said. This was bad movie making. When Star Wars was filmed, they dubbed in Darth Vader's voice using a separate actor than the one in the mask. They could have spent the extra time to fix this problem in post production or just filmed and recorded the dialog separately then put them back together. It would have been easy since they didn't even have to worry about matching lip movement.
Characterization was good though there were way too many extra's without personalities. The main stay characters and the villains were well fleshed out.
Once again, Batman's motivation is saving Gotham City, though to be honest, seeing how the people behave when they are in a state of anarchy makes you wonder if anyone other than Robin and his bus load of orphans is worth saving.
This movie is grim, slower paced than its predecessors and has more moral ambiguity. The end twist on who the real villain is is good however the conclusion of the movie is not satisfying. I won't spoil it, but if you are a serious fan of this version of Batman it may let you down.