Brief Batman review
This review is not likely to make The Phil happy.
In a word: Tedious
Joseph Gordon Leavitt – fantastic as always. Happy to see him join the cast.
Anne Hathaway – stunning and fantastic cast
Tom Hardy – wasted cast of a good actor
Storyline – meh. It’s Bane. I despised the Bane storyline in the comics. I despise it here, despite the mix with the League storyline.
I just wanted the whole middle of the movie to get moving, already.
The OAM says he needs to watch it again because he thinks he probably missed something. It seemed like it should have been better. I said I’d see it again when it is out to rent but can’t guarantee I wouldn’t fall asleep in the middle just to avoid the bullshit 99%-er platitudes. Sure, Nolan rebuffs the 99%-er diatribe and Bane is simply using them for his own ends, but sitting through an hour of it wears on me to the point that I want to slit my wrists to escape.
As a continuation of Nolan’s vision of Batman, it’s good. If I didn’t have a white hot burning hatred of Bane I might have liked this more and I fully admit that my review may be colored by that.
Go see it at least at matinee prices if you like the Nolan Batman movies. See what you think.
*meh* I’ll wait to rent. If then. I really like being able to FF through movie yawns.
I really liked it, but then I like Bane and I like No Man’s Land. I thought the 99% bullshit was actually very good. I thought it showed how dangerous and horrifying class warfare and the “eat the rich” mentality can be. If anything it left me with another reminder of what could have been if Occupy Wall Street had succeeded (not that I needed it, mind you. History is chock full of reminders).
Sorry you didn’t care for it, Nic. I had a blast and will need further viewing to verify, but my current opinion has this just topping out Dark Knight.
I’m glad you did like it. :)
I think my biggest problem is that I already have a pretty solid picture of how dangerous the mentality is and having a solid center of the movie where it seemed like that was the only focus really wore on me. I don’t find bad guys winning for long stretches to be entertaining. My imagination is sufficiently good that I had all kinds of scenes in my head of what would happen to people who had done nothing wrong to make me uncomfortable. :)
I’m feeling more generous about it the further out I get from seeing it though, so my initial impressions may have been unduly harsh.
Oh, and a slightly scary possibility occurred to to me this morning. I had a difficult time understanding Bane for several bits of dialogue. I wonder if that impacted my enjoyment and secondly, does that mean I’m getting old?