Movie Review - The Dark Knight Rises

Well, I just saw The Dark Knight Rises and since I already gave you guys a review of The Amazing Spider-Man, I thought I would do the same for this movie.  If I see anything else this summer (which is doubtful, a Total Recall remake and a Matt Damon-less Bourne movie just don't sound worth spending money on), I will do the same.

I don't want to say anything that will give away the ending, so I'll start out by saying I loved it.  The plot was great, although at times I thought it was a little far-fetched, even for a Christopher Nolan Batman movie.  I thought the pace of the movie was amazing.  Considering it was two and a half hours long, you never noticed because there were no slow spots and if there were, they were so quick and an action scene was never far away (plus, there was no Maggie Gyllenhall to drag this movie down, and I still think she is the reason The Dark Knight wasn't nominated for Best Picture).  Also, I thought this movie showed a lot more humor than the last two movies, Batman had a couple of legitimately funny liners and even though he wasn't supposed to be funny, I laughed at everything Bane said.

Speaking of Bane, I thought Tom Hardy did an amazing job with the character considering that the only acting he could actually do was with his eyes.  Virtually his entire face was covered by a mask and all of his dialogue was voiced over, so the only way Tom could act was through his eyes and body language and he nailed it.  And considering that Tom Hardy is a couple of inches shorter (5'10) than Christian Bale (6'0), Nolan really made me believe that he was huge.  I also thought Anne Hathaway's portrayal of Selina Kyle (note I didn't say Catwoman b/c she wasn't technically Catwoman, just a cat burglar that dressed in tight leather on occasion) was interesting and I thought she did a good job with it.  And as for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, I was surprised how believable his tough cop character was.  Considering I always think of him as that kid who looked like Mitch Kramer from Dazed and Confused on 3rd Rock from the Sun, I thought he did a great job with his character.

The action scenes were incredible and the final showdown between the Caped Crusader and Bane was really intense and I absolutely loved it.  The only complaint I have about the movie was the really fake CG scenes involving the Bat-Cycle.  For some reason it looked so fake compared to any other CG used in the movie and that takes into account that they had a huge CG Bat-Plane-like thing flying all over Gotham City.

As a whole, this movie was a great way to finish of the trilogy and I would highly recommend seeing it.  Also, I would like to give my heart out to the victims of the Colorado shooting and I hope they allow the victims of that tragedy to beat that coward to death with socks full of quarters.

Rating (out of 5):  4.75 Farts