It was never going to live up to the hype - and it doesn't.
That said, Christopher Nolan has done a fantastic job with his Batman trilogy.
I'll say up front that this is inferior to The Dark Knight and that has nothing to do with the mysticism surrounding Heath Ledger's now iconic performance as The Joker.
Here's my review of The Dark Knight .
Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is a broken man as we rejoin Gotham City eight years after the events of The Dark Knight. Gotham now celebrates low crime thanks to the Harvey Dent law put in place when Dent was given credit for saving the city in the previous film. (We all know though what he was actually up to).
There's a mysterious series of 'Cat' burglaries in Gotham being staged by Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) and there's a new terrorist on the loose called Bane (Tom Hardy).
Bane, who calls himself Gotham's reckoning, sets out to detonate a nuclear bomb which was created, sort of, by Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and Miranda Tagg (Marion Cotillard) in the form of a fusion reactor to provide Gotham with clean energy.
It's time for Batman to resurface but when he does he's pursued having taken the fall for Dent's crimes. Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), injured early in the film, begins grooming a new detective John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who is one of the few people in town to still believe in 'The Batman'.
At 164 minutes there is a lot of ground covered so I won't go into the intricacies of the plot, but needless to say Bane wreaks havoc on Gotham and it's up to Batman to again come to the rescue.
What The Dark Knight Rises does well is ties up the trilogy though there are one or two ends left open, which I found interesting. We also get cameos from a couple of previous villains Ra's Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) and Dr Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) that I didn't think added anything although Murphy's cameo was amusing.
The main problem I had was with the villain Bane. He came across as more of a thug than a true evil genius which made him harder to warm to than The Joker. His voice was interesting, though.
There also wasn't nearly enough of Batman himself. After his early car chase with the police he confronts Bane and is beaten to pulp and then doesn't reappear until the climax.
However, I loved Anne Hathaway in her role. Though never actually referred to as Catwoman we all know that's who she was and her outfit was up there with Michelle Pfeiffer's. She also had an attitude that I've never seen Hathaway pull off before in her previous roles - she was the standout performance for me and in some ways made up for the absence of Batman.
As mentioned, even though Nolan's trilogy is wrapped up he does leave a loose end or two.
The main one surrounds the character of John Blake. We discover, after he tosses in his job with the police, that John is not his real first name - his name is actually Robin.
The ending will have you screaming - 'another sequel' or at least 'spin-off'. And from what I understand from my little knowledge of the comic books this is actually plausible. Though I can't understand why Nolan would want to 'conclude' something in this way.
From all of this you'll think I didn't like the film. Well, I did like it and I thought it was excellent.
But, it is absolutely not the best of Nolan's three offerings and I'm not even sure it is the second best. There's no doubt you'll enjoy it if you're a fan of the series - an 8 out of 10 - but be warned you might be a little let down if you're expecting a masterpiece.
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