The Dark Knight Rises is a Pulp Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (16 June 2013)

Nolan has created a Pulp Masterpiece. With Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Nolan set out to get Batman back to his gritty roots. With Rises, Nolan slowly backs out of the grittiness and enters a pulpier realm. A Bondian realm that begins with a mid-air high-jacking. Has a villain that wears a mask 99% of the film. Batman and Catwoman fighting side by side only to be stopped by gunfire from henchmen so incompetent they can only hit their own comrades rather than hitting their intended targets. And of course a nuclear bomb countdown. Nolan clearly has a love for James Bond films (as he also showed with Inception). As a fellow Bond aficionado, I really appreciate this, and it only adds to my overall enjoyment of the film. Superhero movies generally follow a particular formula. I could predict the plot beats of most of the recent Marvel films (this is not a complaint of Marvel's Cinematic Universe, just an observation). The point is that this film (as its predecessor did) threw me more surprises than most films of this genre typically do. And my expectations were blown away. TDKR has a very intricate structure, and for being 165 minutes long, the movie flies by at a nice pace.
Nolan's film has the feeling of a Coppola-sized epic from the 1970s, with its plot complexity, large cast of characters, intricate dialogue scenes with equal helpings of pain and tragedy. Many scenes in the film are shot in an orange/sepia tone that reminds me of The Godfather Part II. Tom Hardy's Bane is a mythical, Kurtz-like antagonist. The film has subtext and some political satire, one can interpret that how they will.
"The Dark Knight Rises" could very well be the most polarizing film of Nolan's career thus far, hopefully the debate will continue.