Disappointing, to say the least.

Rating: 4/10 (21 July 2012)

Here be spoilers; tread carefully.
Overall, this film left me cold. Also, the fact that the score was nothing short of deafening might have put a bit of a damper on my enjoyment. (I am getting really, really tired of Hans Zimmer.) To make matters worse, the dialogue was so quiet that I couldn't hear what the characters were saying half the time. And then we had Thing-In-the-Mouth Face whose speech was often totally unintelligible.
Let me get it out of the way now: The first half of this movie was bo- ring. I found myself getting restless about halfway through. (It's about the same length as Avengers, plus about 15 minutes, and I've sat through Avengers several times without getting bored.) Things picked up when Bane blew up all the bridges, though.
Speaking of which, I thought Bane was a wasted opportunity. He had a lot of presence, thanks to Tom Hardy, but the film completely throws him away in the end. The truth comes out about Tate, and Bane is tossed aside like a pistol whose ammunition is spent. Was that the point? I don't know. If that is the point, it's a crappy point. You don't spend two and a half hours building up a villain and then just toss him aside. I was just fine with him being the son of Ra's Al Ghul, was it really necessary to have Tate be his progeny instead? I feel like it was only done for the sake of shoving a plot twist in there.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say that Marion Cotillard's character didn't need to be in the film at all. Only real purpose she seemed to serve was to make sweet, sweet love with Bruce down by the fire. She totally usurped Bane in every way, even though she supposedly "loved" him and he went through hell to save her when she was a child. That's gratitude for you.
Which brings me to another problem I had with the writing: Bruce was supposed to be so broken up over the death of Rachel, yet he's totally okay with sleeping with Tate, whom he seems to barely even know. And then there's the half-assed "romance" between him and Selina. What? I think it's the most ineffective love triangle I've seen in a movie in a long time.
I think Selina could've been interesting if fleshed out a bit more (no pun intended). Instead, she's little more than a pretty face in a catsuit, and a plot device. I saw one review of the film that said she was a much more convincing ass-kicker than Black Widow; I disagree so vehemently that I almost punched my computer screen. I mean, was that person asleep during Black Widow's fight scenes? These characters may both wear skin-tight black costumes but that's where the similarities end. Black Widow feels like a real person, or at least a very deep and well-thought-out character. Selina Kyle does not, in my opinion.
The empty "politics" also really bothered me. It felt more like window- dressing than anything else. At times it ripped me right out of the story because the parallels to OWS were TOO obvious and really served little purpose to the overall story other than saying, "LOOK HOW REALISTIC THIS IS, GUYS". But for what? To what end? Did I miss something because I couldn't hear the damn dialogue over the score? It felt like the film was trying to say something when it really had nothing to say besides "blowing people up is bad". A sentiment I agree with, but still. People tout Nolan as an artiste and an auteur, and all kinds of other pretentious BS, and all his film can say is "violence bad"? Like I said, maybe I missed something.
I wasn't all that impressed by the action, either. I realize that some people will hate me for this, but I thought the action scenes in Avengers were way more thrilling than the ones found here. I realize that in Avengers, pretty much everyone is superhuman, but The Dark Knight Rises is still about a guy in a batsuit with wonderful toys, so I think the comparison is a valid one. I also cared a lot more about the characters in Avengers, so that might also have something to do with it.
About the "death" of Bruce Wayne: I felt sad, but only for Alfred. I'm not sure if it was just due to Michael Caine being excellent, or if it was due to the writing. I'm inclined to lean on the side of the former.
If the series was over anyway, I would have preferred that they just kill Bruce off for real, what with all the talk about sacrifice and not being afraid to die. It would have made that emotional moment with Alfred ring so much truer. It would have made much more sense. But then the second I saw Alfred on holiday, I knew. He could've ended it on a question mark and just shown Alfred looking into the camera as if seeing someone he recognized, and then cut to the end credits. Even that would've been better than showing Bruce with Selina, which just felt cheap to me.
It wasn't all bad, though. I liked Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Blake. He seemed like a real human being trapped in a world of crazy characters. And at least his motivations were somewhat clear. Also, you gotta love Gary Oldman.