Great CGI buttresses silly premise

Rating: 7/10 (12 March 2019)

Pretentious super-villain Bane (Tom Hardy) takes over Gotham City in the name of the 99% and then holds everyone hostage with a nuke hacked from Bruce Wayne's (Christian Bale) experimental fusion reactor. Lots of carnage, quips, and growling tough-guy talk ensues, as The Batman employs various bat-gadgets to deal with the threat. Along for the ride is super-cat burglar, the Catwoman (Anne Hathaway, latest in a luscious lineage of Catwomen, who is saddled with the worst lines) and old standbys: loyal but conflicted Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and long-suffering bat-butler Alfred (Michael Caine). The basic plot is pretty silly (the entire Gotham City PD gets trapped in the sewers at one point) and full of the annoying little holes that weaken films like this (despite Bane's über-competence and army of minions, there are never guards at convenient places, like behind the nuke-truck). There is also a ridiculous sequence where a crippled Wayne encounters the world's best chiropractor in a supposedly escape-proof prison and then reappears in sealed-off Gotham. The climax of the film has some timing issues (commented on at length in the 'goofs section), which is not helped by several characters getting a chance for some potential final gestures/words despite the clock ticking to imminent annihilation. Needless to say, the 200+ million dollar film looks fantastic and is easily worth watching for that alone, but a tighter-story and a less trite script would have really helped.