Well before I start a preface, ive been in this thread since its inception and the one before, ive made it known on countless occasions that i thought BB was the superior film to tdk, but i liked them both alot. I went into this film with lowish expectations because of the word of mouth, i never considered BB or TDK to be shining examples of narrative, the former suffering from cornier elements and the latter pacing problems (see the third act). That being said, as films, as pieces of entertainment they were and are great examples of fun movies, taken a bit more seriously than comic book films are and allowed their share of issues because at the end of the day they were fun to watch. Now I took away from alot of the negative reviews that people who were unable to enjoy the occasional corny element, or suffer through some pacing issues, would ultimately not enjoy tdkr.
But the problem is tdkr suffers way way too much from these issues, it requires you to look past so much, to ignore so many elements and throw pacing out of the window to enjoy the film. It is a mess, and as someone who can sit through practically anything and accept a huge amount of issues in films it was perhaps the messiest film ive seen in ages.
Ill start with the good, because there is alot of good in there. Catwoman steals every scene she is in, Hathaway is so damn good in this film that about half way in I wanted to see her story, just hers, i would have happily spent the 2nd half of the film watching her arc, she is seriously that good. I have not seen Hathaway in anything before this but rare is the day when someone can have that much presence in a film that I want to watch everything. The ending, bar one part, is also great, no bones about it its a real treat to watch, in fact the final third of the movie picks up the pace and its impossible not to get caught up in the action, id say out of the film the third is by far the best paced part of the film. JGL is also tremendous, not as ominous as Kyle but you get the feeling he is really working hard to earn his place in the film and he does so.
Now the bad, pacing pacing pacing, the film feels like a 1st cut, almost like a storyboard with half the elements cut out, if Nolan showed this to me as a general "so this isnt finished but heres what we have" id have said "yeah your onto something here, i cant wait till its finished". The film simply does not feel finished, it asks too much of the audience, too many blanks to fill in and too many things to overlook. Its hard without going into spoilers but for a film to frustrate me this much baffles me, my tolerance level for films is huge, im not a critic, i dont come out of every film discussing to death the bits that didnt work and i consider myself very very forgiving, but it simply asks too much. The problem is that when you overlook 3 or 4 things, you reason to yourself the film isnt perfect, enjoy the ride. But when you ask yourself to overlook 10-15 things suddenly it becomes incredibly hard to get sucked into the world, im really trying hard not to come out with spoilers here but id be happy to discuss these parts with anyone once they have seen the film.
Acting wise Cain is mixed with some great lines well given and some awful dialogue no-one could make work. Bale with Catwoman seems to work great, Bale on his own suffers. Bane, I can understand fully why people complain about his voice, i caught 90% of it but it always sucks not to hear that 10%. Oldman, i feel he got really short changed personally, i wont say more but from an actor that good i shouldt have to hear some of the dialogue that was written for him.
