"You missed a spot, Nolan"

Rating: 7/10 (21 July 2012)

I'll be brutally honest here. I liked The Dark Knight better than this. Even though its just couple of hours since I finished watching it.
Sure, TDK had its flaws, but then, it was such a marvelous noir saga, a treatise in crime drama that left us begging for more at the end. The phrase "page-turner" is often applied to engrossing books, but that could work just as well for the magnificent film. To this day, I cannot take my eyes off whenever I see TDK and by the time that ravishing interrogation scene between Batman and Joker is on, nothing is likely to stir me from my seat. By choosing to make the titular character undergo a perception shift, a massive (and ultimately successful) gamble was taken. And who can forget the late, great Heath Ledger's spectacular performance?
TDKR is not a bad movie per se. Seen alone, it has the ideal ingredients for a summer blockbuster: an A-list cast, monumental action sequences, modern themes of terrorism and official ineptitude, as well as intricate sub-plots which mesh well together at the end. There is more than a passing reference to the predecessors, especially Batman Begins (which, in my humble opinion, is an enormously underrated flick). And it works to a great extent.
Where this film fails as TDK succeeded is in the amount of layering. Some sub-plots were so complex that I was left confused as to where I was before that particular sequence (case in point: Blake's impromptu reconnaissance of a dockyard). Others were left frustratingly hanging in thin air. The plot also seems slow paced at first. While the first sequence is downright awesome, what follows afterward is distinctly underwhelming. Above all else, Batman is renowned to be a master strategist. Here, he ends up getting deceived not once, but twice at Catwoman's hands. You mean to tell me that eight years is good enough to make a superbly trained, marine-worthy, genius escape artist-cum-detective become dull? Really?
I won't go ahead and slate Nolan more here, simply because he gave me the privilege of watching two of the best superhero movies ever filmed in Batman Begins and TDK. The glass is always half-full in my eyes, and I'll admit that Hathaway and Gordon-Levitt were both perfect selections for their roles. I'm not too sure of Tom Hardy, since his performance is more physical than metaphorical but given his task was to exude a ruthless menace, he did his job. The rest of the familiar supporting cast are brilliant as before, especially with Caine showing his human side that we always suspected was well alive beneath that stiff British upper lip exterior and dry wit. I read somewhere that this is not a Batman movie, but a Bruce Wayne movie. And I fully agree. Having to reconcile (with unflattering results) with a life without Batman, Bruce is alone even as a social presence and a corporate figure. It is a true challenge but then again, Christian Bale turned in a remarkable performance in both BB and TDK (he held his own in those scenes where Ledger was not present). And in TDKR, he leaves an indelible mark on a role that would probably be the benchmark.
Batman Begins was all about "Fear" while "Chaos" was a running theme in TDK. TDKR does a great job in being a conclusion to the trilogy, but it is not the best one among the three, probably because there is no strong undercurrent of a theme here.