"hmphhh ffwffred bwttmnnnn" - a quote from Bane...

Rating: 6/10 (29 July 2012)

So, we come to the end of the Dark Knight trilogy and from reading most of he reviews out there you'd be led to believe that this is the best comic based film ever... Well, not in my mind. TDKR does have its moments of greatness and it is worth a watch, but unlike the previous film the only thing that would draw me to shell out cinema cash again would be to try and catch Bane's frequently muffled dialogue., it really can be that bad!
So where does it fall down? There's a number of things that left me scratching my head after viewing. Starting at he top, for those who are fans of the knight fall series Bane represented the ultimate foil for batman. He was clever, cunning, physically and mentally strong and played a game that would result in batman being broken and cast down, defeated, for all of Gotham to see. The Bane we see in TDKR does bear similarities but when we get to the end game of the film it is revealed that he is merely a lackey for someone else. Reduced to a hired thug, a shameful waste of a great comic villain. Christopher Nolan also seems to have abandoned his talent for setting up and revealing twists in the story. There's no real shocks to be unleashed here as the twists are clumsily dumped into your lap. This may be due to the rush to get the story tied up after a very long winded intro, get the first hour or so out of the way and suddenly it's propelled forward with little time for reflection. The film also has a lot of unanswered questions. Why are Bane's men so willingly loyal ( guy in the plane being a good example) when he appears to be quick to use them up? Why does no one link the bat mobile to the tanks that cruise Gotham city and ask the question ' didn't batman drive one of those?' If one of the worlds richest/most famous men wanted to disappear, wouldn't they have to do something more than just pretend to die (I'll nip out for a coffee in Italy...) Why does it appear that Jim Gordon is still commissioner when he's written a confession that states he perverted the course of justice? There's just a few that don't really fit into the batman ethos for my feeling and there's more to be pondered as the film progresses.
It's not all bad though. In the build up to release the one thing I thought wouldn't work was cat woman in the form of Ann Hathaway but from the whole film she (if you'll pardon the pun) steals the show. Joseph Gordon-Levitt also puts a good turn in as rookie cop Blake but, again, this was a fairly clumsily handed story arc that you know where his journey is going to take him. The action is pretty well handled as well and does make the second half of he film worth watching (especially the first fight between batman and bane, the end of which is straight out of knightfall).
Overall this is pretty far from where we last met the dark knight and maybe the second part of the trilogy was too much to live up to. There's no performances to rival Heath Ledger or Aaron Eckhart, OK well maybe Ann Hathaway but that's it, and there's to many story arcs packed into the single film. This means there's no time for any of the established protagonists to develop further which leaves a hollow feeling given the fondness that's developed in the last 2 films.
Disappointing to say the least. I saw 2 films yesterday, TDKR and Ice Age 4, out of the 2 it surprises me to say that I preferred IA4. Even more so because of how highly I rate TDK - 10/10. TDKR - 6/10.