Now that it has settled in, I’m leaning toward saying Rises is the best of the three. Begins and Rises are both great stories, but I don't think the acting in Begins is on par with Rises. Not bad by any stretch, but Holmes brings it down a notch, as does Hauer.

In Rises, the depth of the character of Selina, as well as Anne Hathaway’s expert handling of her, push the film to the next level. Joseph Gordon-Levitt puts the thing out of reach. Everyone else is their usual fantastic. Bane is fine but there isn’t really a lot of depth there. He’s more of an archetypal bad guy character, as opposed to depth. He works perfectly as a symbol of danger, but it’s mostly a visual performance. I dug the Sean Connery vibe in his voice. He worked perfectly for this story. He was a welcome pull-back from the Joker in the previous film. Limiting Bane gave the story and the other characters room to breathe.

As I think about the film now, my mind’s eye sees it as a Selina\Blake story. Those two performances and characters left the deepest impression. In the clip linked below, when Selina says “I’m not sure”, you see that she really is the person Batman tells her she is when he puts his trust in her later on. Outstanding. To me, just in this clip alone, Levitt and Hathaway become the film for me.

http://www.moviefanatic.com/videos/the-dark-knight-rises-interrogation-clip/

Second viewing this weekend.