A disappoint final chapter to an engrossing trilogy

Rating: 7/10 (31 July 2012)

A disclaimer right at the beginning here, I loved the trilogy.
Okay, so Gotham has been having it good for 8 years and we join the story on Harvey Dent Day. We learn that Batman has taken the fall for Dent's death and disappeared, and Bruce Wayne has become a recluse. But a storm is coming.
The third installment of the Dark Knight trilogy is a very unworthy final chapter to what has been till now a fascinating journey. The disappointments start with the villain in this installment – Bane, played by Thomas Hardy (of Inception fame). After Neeson's Ra's Al Ghul and Ledger's Joker, Hardy's Bane seems tame and comic.
Let's face it, it is tough to make a good superhero movie nowadays. Technology has moved so far ahead that almost everybody is a Spielberg or Lucas now. It is difficult to think up plot lines and action sequences that that fresh and novel. The movie suffers from this. Apart from Hardy, almost everybody else in the movie disappoints. Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception), Marion Cotillard (Inception), Anne Hathaway, are all ordinary. Christian Bale, however, delivers a standout performance as the life- weary Bruce Wayne. Unlike the previous two installments, here he mesmerizes.
All this said, I have seen the movie twice and will see it twice more before it reaches the 30-day mark. So all in all it cant be all that bad. It does keep you engrossed in fits and starts. But as a trilogy, a benchmark has been set.