Overblown, bombastic nonsense redeemed by very little

Rating: 4/10 (17 April 2014)

I don't doubt it will be regarded as total heresy to say so, but The Dark Knight Rises is confused, muddled, bombastic nonsense.
I remember quite liking Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, not rating The Dark Knight very much, but this, the conclusion of Nolan's trilogy (there were other, to my mind more successful, editions of the franchise) really doesn't take off. And the only folk we can blame are director Christopher Nolan who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan. (I don't much like Christian Bale, and never have, who seems to take himself just a tad too seriously in whatever role he plays, but that is, at present, beside the point.)
To be blunt the film is a mess from the plot up. I'm not even too sure what the story is: what is going on? I'll leave to one side ludicrous elements such as how Batman/Bruce Wayne manages to heal himself after having his back broken and, once escaping his jail in India, somehow gets to Gotham City within a day; or who and what are Daggett and Stryver, introduced as apparently essential part of the story, then dispensed with in a trice; or 'Dr Pavel'; or the about-turn of Miranda from being Batman's love interest to being the villain of the piece in an odd twist on the deus ex machine ruse.
But on it goes, from one careless obscure detail to another. And this is great filmmaking? Where is the rooting for the good guys we expect in such a blockbuster aimed at the adolescent in all of us? Where is the suspense? What suspense there was is so synthetically contrived that there's no suspense at all.
There are some good things in it and some good actors (and why are Aidan Gillen - who I didn't even notice - and Cillian Murphy, two fine actors, reduced to bit parts of no consequence whatsoever?) But none of them do anything to redeem the film.
In previous incarnations Batman was played by Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney. I haven't seen the Clooney version, but in those earlier films the whole exercise did not take itself too seriously and they were enjoyable and cartoonish. Under Nolan that has changed: it is all so ponderously, bombastically done that where there should be a liveliness, a sense of fun, the heart of it all is dead. By all means see it (if you are reading this to decide whether it is worth your time), but you have been warned. It isn't at all good.