Be warned, this review contains several spoilers.
There are certain statements used to preface a negatively toned article. “Let me start off by saying…” is a pretty common one, and I feel it might be appropriate. The same way my mom will never be my best critic, merely my favorite one, I lament my own disdain for this final Batman film by Christopher Nolan. I want to love it. I want it to be the bookend to a storied retelling of how Batman should always have been, uniquely gritty, troubled and ultimately human. This third installment follows one of the best story arcs I’ve ever read in a comic book series, although admittedly I read very few comic books. This storyline drove me to purchase one. Note that this small review is not driven out of some Heath Ledger nostalgia either, for no one realistically expected that void to be filled. We were lucky as film lovers to have him at all, and those hoping that the third movie feels like the second (the best) should just put The Dark Knight dvd on repeat.
This movie fails in its lack of simplicity. It feels like, for the entirety of its nearly three hour run time, like Jerry Bruckheimer’s personal firing range. Everything feels overtly complicated, more things blow up than necessary, and spoiler alert, a weapon of mass destruction is featured. The storyline feels predictable, which as a fan of superhero movies is nothing new, but what sinks this movie for me is that it tries to pretend it’s suave and complicated. I want the meat and potatoes to not be buried beneath the hollow lie of champagne gravy. I want Batman versus Evil.
Bane offers the perfect foil to a war torn Batman, even if it was Nolan’s conscious effort to make Bane sound like Sean Connery in a bucket.
The standard, perfect, time tested formulaic arch nemesis that Bane represents gets buried under this hurriedly woven web of supposed intrigue and plot twists. This isn’t to say that Nolan hasn’t breathed substance into Bruce Wayne and Batman, because he has. These movies tower over their predecessors with creativity and a much needed macabre of not only personal sacrifice but the psychological cost of being “the city a hero needs.” There are of course bright moments in this final chapter, especially when Michael Caine or Liam Neeson steal a scene, however they are still brief. The tense, climactic fight scene between Bane and Batman happens early on, and we are left in this suspended reality where conflict, hope, and redemption are put on a countdown timer that seems conveniently long.
The pace of the movie is woefully inconsistent, where your concern for Bruce Wayne and his alter ego go through cool down moments that bring you back off the edge of your seat. Anne Hathaway is a decent anti-hero/love interest as Catwoman, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes for a solid young protege of Batman but they aren’t the focus of this film, merely side dishes for more film projects. It is hard to tell whether this story line proved too difficult for its running time, the plot too short on quality, or whether Nolan simply over thought and ultimately over worked his final act as arbiter of Gotham’s hero.
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