Exciting to watch, frustrating to think about

Rating: 6/10 (28 July 2012)

This is a good movie. It has decent action, some well-developed character arcs and a few frightfully effective scenes. However, because of its pedigree (the director, budget, actors and predecessor), I expected more.
I wanted a brave thought-provoking finale that would have turned Nolan's Batman trilogy into an all-time masterpiece, on par with Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies. A lot of over-excited cool-aid drinkers think he pulled it off too, but I think, over time, the film's problems will become more and more apparent and eventually overshadow the initial positive reaction, the way it happened with The Episode One.
Problems such as:

NO BATMAN IN A BATMAN MOVIE

I'm not a big fan of batman character and superhero comics in general, but even I think the middle part, with Bruce out of the picture, was too long. This was a proper story arc for the first movie, not the ending of a trilogy.

TOO MANY SIDESHOWS

The movie tries to introduce both Catwoman (never called as such) and Robin. It definitely needed Robin, as Batman's successor, but Catwoman? Her arc was well executed, sure, but it didn't really tie into any of the major themes of the movie and trilogy, making it ultimately pointless.
This 45 minutes would have been better spent putting some more 'meat' on the whole 'Gotham under siege' situation, which brings us to...

SUPERFICIAL TREATMENT OF THE MAIN THEME

Batman and Gordon say Gotham is saved thanks to their lie. Bane says Gotham is a cesspool of corruption and that 99% is silently stirring with resentment. Bane takes over the city and gives it to the masses. What do they do? Revolution? Resistance? In between? Was Bane right? Was Batman right?
We just don't know. Other than a few contrived kangaroo court scenes (which seems to be under control of Bane's fanatics), we never really see how the ordinary people experienced the crisis. Think back to The Dark Knight and the two boats scene. This movie needed scenes like that. But whether because of political hot-potatitis or PG rating or simple lack of screen-time, we only see a few vague training-montage-like snapshots of what should have been the meat of the story.
And of course, this also brings into question...

BANE'S PLAN

Bane makes his move and brings down both Batman and Gotham City in one fell scoop. Brilliant! He takes Batman to his super prison, shows him a TV and gloats how he's going to torture Gotham before Batman's eyes. "You have't seen anything yet", he crows.
YES! Can't wait to see the rest of his plan! Will he turn the poor against the rich? Neighbor against neighbor? Will he trick one strata of the falling society to take out another, like Joker did with criminals in The Dark Knight's opening? Will he spread his madness to the society at large? The USA? The world?
.... or will he simply sit on his ass and wait for the bomb to explode, taking both him, his protégé and the last remnants of the secret society he claims to champion? WHAT!? Come on, what kind of nonsense is this? He didn't torture Batman. He didn't torture Gotham. He didn't seem to have a plan at all.
If he actually did something with the city he took over, he might have given more meat to another aspect that sorely needed more time, which is...

ROBIN'S ARC

Robin starts a perspective pro order cop. In the 2nd act, he starts losing faith in the system he is sworn to protect. In the big finale, he casts off the chains of ineffective government bureaucracy and steps in to take Batman's place as Gotham's reigning vigilante.
At least that was the plan. The problem is, we don't ever see the reasons behind his decision. Was cops blowing the bridge to prevent Bane from killing the entire city such an unreasonable decision, to push this law & order guy into vigilantism? Even though I knew they were grooming him for Batman's replacement/sidekick, it came as a real surprise for me when he threw his badge away.
Even worse, the cops in this movie aren't ineffective. They are the ones who take down Bane's army and stop the bomb from exploding. Batman is mostly just flying his little high-tech chopper around, which anyone could do (very over-used plot device, BTW). The cops here are the heroes! And Robin is somehow disillusioned by them? How? Why? This is another place where the minutes taken from Catwoman's pointless arc could have come in handy.
Of course, all this might not have mattered, as some of the movie's major problems lie outside Nolan's jurisdiction, the largest one of them being

REALISTIC BATMAN IN 21ST CENTURY

Batman was conceived a long time ago, when punching up obvious square- faces criminals and throwing them into jail seemed like a proper way for a vigilante to deal with crime. Nolan is aware how naïve this idea is. In his realistic take on Batman, he's constantly trying to appease this comic book background with modern reality. At times, he event succeeds.
And then, he has thousands of cops charge machine-gun-wielding paramilitaries with basically nightsticks. There's a rousing music and the good guys eventually win, of course, but in my mind, the whole time, I was like "Bullshit". It just doesn't work.
Nolan had stretched it too far and the thin line of believability has snapped. Even his major villain resolutions demonstrate the bankruptcy of Batman's ideas: both Bane and the girl are taken out by HE rockets, not handcuffs and the due process of the law.
Welcome to the 21st century, Batman fans. Take off your shoes and produce your biometric IDs in an orderly fashion.
Overall, a good film. Just not all it could have been.