A great film but definitely not perfect

Rating: 7/10 (22 July 2012)

The Dark Knight Rises is a great film and should definitely be watched. This review will have a bunch of critiques in it because... what's the point of reading a review that just compliments a movie non-stop. So remember, I really enjoyed the Dark Knight Rises... but it did have a bunch of annoying factors to it that did take away from the experience overall. I will list my issues with the movie first, then I will say what I enjoyed about the film at the end so that the review will end on a pleasant note.
Something that really bothered me about this movie is that it was inconsistent at times. For example, the power of Batman's bat-copter. In one scene its rockets are extremely powerful and can easily blow up multiple cars in a single shot, but in the next scene it can't even scratch an armored truck with multiple rounds... or even burst its tires. This movie is full of small stuff like that which really bothers me. The other movies were all about making Batman... realistic and more logical. But in this movie it seems like everyone is making stupid decisions, wrong choices, and there seems to be a lack of anyone making intelligent moves except for the main villain. Though I will mention that Commissioner Gordon and his detective side-kick break that formula which was nice.
First off (and this goes with all of the Batman movies): why are the cops portrayed as cliché jerks who don't really know how to fight? This movie really portrays cops badly and that they are useless. In the movie there is an army of cops with armed guns, running against an army of thugs with machine guns, snipers, and rockets. So what do the cops do? They run out into the open in a large swarm... and use hand to hand combat... they don't use their guns to fight the hundreds of guys with machine guns and tanks... it makes no sense.
The military in this movie seems to work similarly to the cops but even worse. In case you don't know, *spoilers* this movie revolves around Bane and a nuclear bomb threat. Basically he has a fusion reactor that is portable and is threatening Gotham with it. The thing that bothers me is that the military does absolutely nothing about it. While Bane does say that if anyone enters Gotham that he will set it off, there still would've been ways to take out Bane. It bothers me that the military does absolutely nothing at all to try and stop Bane. But I guess this movie isn't about the military.
A small problem I mentioned earlier and I will mention again is that no one except the enemies use their guns... at all. The enemies are threatening Gotham with a nuke, are killing hundreds (if not thousands) of innocent people, and armed with machine guns and even declare they are in open war... but no one ever really uses any guns (effectively) against them. Which leads me up to Bane... Bane is really menacing and well portrayed. But people seem to forget that (like the joker) a single bullet can still kill him. The second you realize that guns actually could've stopped this entire situation... the entire plot starts to fall apart... now I'm started to sounds like I work for the NRA hahahaha so I'll stop.
Minor issues: No bat-mobile... at all, Bane doesn't have a dramatic death, all guys fall for women they've met two seconds ago, if you could stop the fusion core from going off by flooding it (which is stated in the movie) then why did it go off at the end? Another question, why didn't Morgan Freeman just flood the room with the reactor which would've killed all of the bad guys and would've disabled the nuke. That would've saved so many lives and the movie would've been a good hour shorter.
Now that I'm done listing the minor faults of the movie, here are the good stuff! First off, the movie has a lot of nice standard special effects. Standard special effects always look nicer and keep movies from aging. Though the CGI in this movie... it already looks aged. Bane is a good menace in this movie and is very well acted. He looks very powerful and intimidating in appearance, but the movie didn't put much emphasis on the fact that his mask is what makes him powerful. The movie never really says that his mask is the key to his power but oh well.
The acting is really good in this movie and it seems slightly odd that pretty much everyone is a little bit more interesting than Bruce Wayne. I'm not saying that Christian Bale didn't do a great job of acting, but all of the other characters were a bit more intriguing in my opinion.
The plot is pretty good, there are a few plot holes here and there but that's not too important. I guess I was kind of curious why every single person that is in jail seems to be evil and a murderer. I find it odd that it seems like all of the gang lords and murderers want Gotham to be in chaos because most people don't actually want chaos.
The ending was good, but it begs for a sequel sooooooo much! Which is kind of annoying since there won't be a sequel. But at least it ended on a good note that was actually happy. Good movie! Not perfect, but still good!