Finally got to see it tonight. I liked it. A few nags and observations (POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT):
Bane's voice. I'm glad it wasn't some "gritty" unintelligible voice, but he was supposed to be South American and his accent should have been more appropriate to the region. Otherwise I liked his role, but am disappointed at the lack of him having Venom. Him being strong is believable enough, but that scene in the metro tunnel where Bane kicks Batman's would have been more intense if Batman was beating on him a while and suddenly Bane juiced up and just totally wrecked him. They are really pretty evenly matched, and although I can believe Batman losing the fight as it is because of his lack of planning beforehand (which is a large portion of how Batman manages to survive most of his encounters, being well informed going into the fight), I think it would have been a good opportunity to REALLY demonstrate what kind of inhuman threat Bane is and not just a really strong guy who wants people dead. He's a really REALLY strong guy who wants people dead.
I was fairly pleasantly surprised with Anne Hathaway's portrayal of Catwoman. I expected her to have more of a villainous role, though; obviously Catwoman has never been that nefarious a character and is sometimes "good," but I expected her to be involved in some kind of big heist or something at the least. Instead she just kind of became a supporting character and vague love interest of Bruce/Batman. The way the movie played out at the end with them together just didn't really make a lot of sense since there was never really any actual developmental interaction between the two besides the one quick sequence with her telling Batman to leave Gotham with her.
Speaking of villains, I was pleasantly and thoroughly surprised that it turned out that Talia Al'Ghul was the real antagonist the whole time. Nolan did a good job of using the fact that he'd already made small changes to the Batman universe and with such class that I only briefly for a second questioned the idea that Bane was Ra's Al'Ghul's child, with the full outside Knowledge that the only child Ra's had was a daughter--Not to mention that she's exceptionally business savvy so I should have known better, but I'm not disappointed by this. It was a delightful twist.
I'm fine with ignoring the small plot holes like how Bruce got back to Gotham from a literal hole in the ground in South America in less than a day, but I figure with his resources (and I don't just mean money) it's not a surprise he'd find a way. Don't really care about little things like that, that's all part of suspension of disbelief for films in general.
Only other thing that bothers me about this movie, as well as Begins, is why the hell Ra's wanted to destroy Gotham in the first place. Joker just wanted to spread chaos, that's always been his thing--to "watch the world burn" as Alfred had put it. But Ra's was determined to obliterate Gotham for no real apparent reason, and he's too intelligent and straight forward to want it to happen "just because." I would have preferred if Nolan explained a bit of reason here.
Aside from that, I enjoyed it and I hate Nolan for the ending and his saying there won't be another one. Come on, I want to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt either suit up as Nightwing or take over the Batman cowl!