The end? 77.5%

Rating: 8/10 (31 July 2012)

This movie breaks Alfred Hitchock's maxim "The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder" (it runs for 164 minutes but I did manage to avoid a 'pit stop' for its duration!). It doesn't quite reach the same heights of its predecessor ("The dark knight") where Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker catapulted that film to near greatness.
In the final (?) instalment of this trilogy (?), the arrival of new villain Bane (played by Tom Hardy) provides a worthy adversary for Batman (played by Christian Bale). Bane's visual and aural aesthetic is very much like that of The Humungus (played by Kjell Nilsson) in the classic Australian movie "Mad Max II". One of my criticisms of this movie though is that it's often hard to decipher what he is actually saying!
The plot concerns the psychopathic plan of Bane to bring the city of Gotham to its knees as well as to destroy its icon, Batman. There are many references in this movie to story elements from the first in this trilogy ("Batman begins"). Since I haven't seen that movie or its sequel since their cinema releases, I have to say that most of this lore went over my head...so, some reminders in the movie would have been appreciated.
Oddly, for most of its running time The Dark Knight Rises doesn't really come across as a superhero movie...it's a busy dramatic movie in any case and leaves one slightly befuddled as to who some of these characters are and why they are important to the story.
Despite this, there are some nice twists and surprises in store for the follower of this franchise. It's not particularly funny, but I did get a laugh out of the performance of a 'judge' in this movie and Buckley's choice given to Commissioner Gordon by the 'judge'.
There is one particularly cliché moment in this movie...when Bruce Wayne gets his own - dare I say it? - push-up and chin-up montage...well, near enough to such a montage.
One distraction for me was the actress playing Selina Kyle/Catwoman. She looked familiar and I was thinking it might have been Penélope Cruz or Salma Hayek. Turns out it was Anne Hathaway...obviously I haven't seen her in a movie for a while! In any case, she's a minor character who makes her presence felt and appreciated.
A related criticism of this movie...well, it's the same one, again...later in the movie one character, Miranda Tate (played by Marion Cotillard), has some important dialogue, but, once again, I found it hard to decipher what she was saying. In this case the issue was her heavily accented English. It is a charming accent...just a wee bit hard to understand though.
I'm not sure what to think of the ending. It's intriguing. If the franchise does continue, it makes me wonder what the story of Batman will be and what his true identity is.
In conclusion, this is a solid, if long and serious superhero movie. It didn't engross me though, although it did entertain and interest. There are elements of class warfare to the story. To me, that seemed to boil down in the movie to Buckley's choice: a world where the super-rich live in shiny castles and the poor lead their bleak existences, or one in which the rubble is shared by everybody. Seems like a false dichotomy to me.