Wow. Just...Wow. WHAT a letdown.

Rating: 3/10 (23 July 2012)

What can I say about the year's most anticipated finale to an utterly exceptional trilogy (well, exceptional for two-thirds of it)? Lots of things and few of them positive. I saw this as part of a triple-billing. So I dare say that a combination of factors prevented my enjoyment – perhaps the late night, the freshness in my mind of its two fantastic prequels, or simply the strain of sitting through over nine hours of ear-piercing action. Whatever it was, I'm sorry to say that TDKR has left me baffled, frustrated and completely unsatisfied. Spoilers abound herein.
I'll begin with the solitary aspect of the film that WAS done well. Bane was awesome. Outdoing the Joker was never going to be an easy feat, and no, he doesn't really outdo him, but he manages to be a scary character in his own right without ever making you think, "Man, I wish the Joker was back." Nothing will ever erase memories of the Joker, but you're able to accept Bane as a totally different character in a whole new story, rather than just a crude remodelling of his predecessor. He is a little hard to understand at times, but in my opinion that just made him even scarier. The accent, the voice, the half-covered face, the unbeatable strength, the fact that he's unclouded by remorse, conscience or delusions of morality – he was a brilliant, bad-ass villain played to chilling perfection by the wonderfully changeable Tom Hardy.
Sadly, he was the only well-written feature on-show, and as the whole show is not all about him, that should tell you something about the rest of the film's writing. Christopher Nolan is one clever cookie. He wrote Inception. The Prestige. MEMENTO, for God's sake. He is normally very careful to avoid plot holes, inconsistencies and things that aren't tied up very well. All three glitches are shamelessly paraded here. The gist of the storyline goes something like this: Batman begrudgingly returns to the superhero business after retiring at the end of TDK, but soon has bigger problems on his hands than Gotham City's devious fiends; his enterprise has been hijacked, causing him to lose all of his money. He tries not to let it break his spirit, but after being beaten to a bloody pulp by Bane, is sent to a grimy prison outside the country – where, after a series of nonsensical healing procedures (how does one recover from a broken back that easily?), he must learn to regain his power, agility and, most crucially, concern for humanity. Once better, he returns to Gotham to stop Bane, whose posse has taken over the town and brought quite a literal hell on Earth to its residents. So...ahem...how did he get out of the country when he's broke? How did he get back INTO the country when he's broke? Did he have a spare credit card on him that hadn't been affected by the liquidation? How'd he get back in when Bane had irrevocably closed off every perimeter of Gotham to ensure that nobody could escape or enter? There's even a scene where Alfred does something that the Alfred whom we all know and love would never, ever do – gives up on Bruce and resigns from his service. He then disappears for the last half of the film and doesn't reappear until just two minutes left to go. Where...the HELL...did he go all of that time?
And oh, the endless enigmas of Catwoman. I love Anne Hathaway, but her involvement in this film didn't work for me either. She starts off exasperating as a character and ends even worse. Now I knew going into it that she'd been described as more of an anti-hero than a villain, so I prepped myself for the inescapability that she was always going to be tricky to figure out. But that, too, is spewed out at the wrong angle. It actually infuriates me that, by the end of the film, they try to convince you that she's not really a bad person per se; she's secretly a hard yet soulful person thrown into bad situations that she must use any means to escape from. What pathetic, complete and utter horses***. She chooses to do everything that she does. She slinks through the film using just about every idiotic excuse you can think of to justify her actions – including the perennial favourite "A girl has to eat"; honey, you can't eat diamonds – and is even the primary cause of Batman being left for dead at the hands of Bane, something over which she shows no regret later. And her reason? Something along the lines of "They were gonna kill me." This coming from the woman who shows in several previous scenes that she's capable of taking down whole roomfuls of guys. But when it comes to risking the life of Gotham's most imperative hero, there's no way that she can get out of it? And Bruce's constant forgiving of her, all because he believes that "there's more to her than what shows on the surface" or some sentimental bullcrap, just makes him look like a d***less idiot. He is never once given ANY reason to think this. Would he be asserting the same outlook if she was a guy? I ended up losing respect for him on these grounds. And there's another problem - Batman just isn't Batman in this outing. Worst of all, her scenes were predictable. Anybody with an IQ higher than their shoe size would know why she kisses Bruce after dancing with him in an early scene. This trick is like 60 years old. How could the Caped Crusader fall for it? And the kiss that they share later is equally stupid because, well..."MORONS! THERE'S A BOMB ABOUT TO ERADICATE THE ENTIRE CITY!" Ruurgh.
My two cents. Now I'm gonna go watch The Room. At least the plot holes in that film were funny.