engrossing but forgettable

Rating: 6/10 (29 July 2012)

The competency of Christopher Nolan in all of his films has been evident, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES is I'm afraid a good film but the weakest of all Nolan's films.
The problem lies in the story, it's not the grip which we experienced in THE DARK KNIGHT, one clearly misses that dark intensity in the plot and meticulous character development.
There are moments for which Nolan deserves to be credited, like the ending was well twisted and pace of the film was well maintained together with the fact that almost three hours weren't wasted but well utilized. The interesting part of this film was that Nolan finally made batman's character a little worthwhile unlike in THE DARK KNIGHT the film clearly belonged to the joker and batman was a little overshadowed, here batman leaves an impression.
The casting was good except Joseph Gordon Levitt, he not in wildest dream looks Robin and his was the stupidest character, the one that irritated the most. He just seems to know everything correctly, all his doubts, ideas and suspicions are held correct.
He knew when the underground bombs detonates that the commissioner would be in danger so he rushed to save him, he found the responsible roadside workers and found the map there on his face and deduced again correctly that bane is trying to trap the officers underground. Then the way he deduces that Bruce Wayne is the batman was just ridiculous, i expected something more imaginable from Nolan here.
Tom Hardy as bane was effective but one clearly misses a strong villain like the joker for the end of trilogy.
There were other loose ends which demanded an explanation but Nolan preferred to ignore them: 1) Ra's appearance as ghost was very lame telling that he was the mercenary who fell in love with local warlord's daughter. 2) What the hell did that inmate do to batman's back, no one in the world can fix a broken back by kicking it back in. 3) Batman just knows exactly where to find cat-woman in the entire city. 4) How the hell Bruce entered into the city when there was no way left unguarded by bane's men and there was no easy access to the city. 5) What was commissioner doing with the speech still in his coat when bane got it, did he used to read it four times a day in order not to feel guilty of hiding the truth from the Gotham people. 6) How does batman escape in the end in just 5 seconds time before the nuclear bomb went off. 7) The romantic angle between cat-woman and batman was very weak and ignored.
But the film was visually stunning, cinematography by Wally Pfister was as usual terrific, visual effects were good, the acting was adequate but the characters were weak this time, not suitable for an epic ending to the trilogy.
A temporarily good film experience with a huge room for improvement. The film was entertaining but not memorable.