Fan Boys Will Hate Me. Sorry.

Rating: 5/10 (27 July 2012)

I don't know if Michael Caine and Anne Hathaway's excellent acting could even redeem this dime-a-dozen special effects extravaganza.
Many of the fight scenes appeared poorly choreographed, badly filmed, and were often devoid of appropriate sound effects. Seemingly unpopulated bridges being blown-up in too-distant shots made me feel like I should call a civil engineer out instead of Batman. And while the lack of copious amounts of actual blood flowing should have been refreshing, it seemed a little weird to see dead police officers sprawled-out but no blood pooling around them.
Now on to the acting: I can't decide which death scene wins the gold for worst acting ever: Sofia Coppola in Godfather 3 or Marion Cotillard's in this movie. As for Bane, each time this character's overly-loud and difficult-to-understand voice emerged, all I could think of was Albert Finney's role as Churchill. Additionally, didn't anyone think that more body and/or facial gestures would be an appropriate acting necessity for a man whose entire mouth and nose were covered??? Perhaps a little more eye grimacing, eyebrow-raising, neck movement, or arm flailing, anyone?
Aside from the aforementioned performances of Mr. Caine and Ms. Hathaway, the story itself failed to engage any aspect of human emotion - being utterly anemic and lacking in its ability to pull the heart- strings of the audience. How do you write, film, and produce a "hero" film without anybody giving a crap emotionally about the hero? Or to have a villain in a film without evoking any element of fear? Furthermore, I don't know how they succeeded in showing an imprisoned mother being attacked and killed before her child's eyes without me giving a hoot about it, but they did. There were very few times in this whole movie where I felt like anyone was in significant danger (or even cared)despite the fact that guns were being shot, things were being blown up left and right, and a flippin' nuclear bomb was poised to blow up the entire city. Was the "drag the little orphans out on the bridge" scene supposed to get my pulse up? Because it didn't, and as we see towards the end of the movie, most of Gotham's citizens were all holed- up safely in their little homes anyway.
This is all compounded by the fact that Christian Bale's performance in this movie is mind-numbingly dull; sure, he can recite lines and groan a little when his vertebrae are supposedly being shoved back in his body, but other than that I'd struggle to give his mediocre performance a "C" in a community college theater course. The movie would get a "B" for effort.