Didn't post last night after having finally viewed the film, as I needed time to ruminate. At least the film, which had me somewhat conflicted, managed to make enough of an impression to have me trying to figure out how I really felt about it.
First off, the acting was pretty above board and ranged from decent to really well done:
- Gordon-Levitt's Blake, was, I felt, one of the better written and acted parts of the film. He sold the emotional impact of the Dark Knight on Gotham and, along with Caine, managed to give some sorely needed emotional underpinnings to the film, while adding a nice moral touchstone. A lot of characters added to serve such a purpose in films come off as perfunctory, when they are supposed to be likable and engaging, but this guy sold it for me.
- Caine was solid, as usual in the Batman films, blurring the line between the poignant and schmaltzy, but as the emotional sounding board of the franchise, that was probably unavoidable. There were a couple times where I thought it was a bit much, but he did generally a very good job with what he was given.
- Hardy, I really like, and he sold the character on his physical acting. The pacing of the lines were delivered well, but the voice modulation was hit or miss for me. At times the voice was annoying, at times awesome and at other times incomprehensible/unintelligible. The problems I had following some of the character's lines could have stemmed from the theaters speakers, but all the other sound seemed fine. In the end, I sometimes felt gypped, because Hardy's natural, unaltered speaking voice kicks shedloads of ass.
- Hathaway was passable and sexy. I'd say more, but I don't know that she merits it, except to say that she definitely felt, to me, that she fit Nolan's vision and his world, and that's not bad.
- Oldamn, solid as always, but something seemed old hat with the character.
- Freeman, what you'd expect...he served a narrowly focused purpose in the film and did it well enough.
- Marion Cotillard...oh, how I've crushed on her hard since Inception. She did well in the movie, and sold her role, for what little time we really got to see any substance from the character (a bit of a disappointment in such a bloated film).
- Cillian Murphy...perfect! Not so much because of his talent, which didn't have any major chance to shine, but just to include him yet again.
- Bale, did a tolerable job on selling the character, as always, though that ever-changing cancer voice of Batman grated on me more than it did in either of the previous films. Perhaps because there was just too much modulation in the film, already. I can't help but feel Bale lost a step somewhere, but I don't know if it was in his delivery or the way the character was written.
So, the film was epic, in many respects, but there was some flatness to it at times and it definitely felt long and bloated with some uninspired fight scenes (especially between Bane and Batman) whose choreography needed a tune up. Overall, a very well conceived film, with some questionable execution and structure (for me), it nonetheless had a great (I dare say powerful) ending and tied things up nicely.
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
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Originally Posted by bassman
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