Chris Kavan's Movie Review of The Dark Knight Rises

Dark Knight Reborn
Chris Kavan - wrote on 07/23/12

First Christopher Nolan reinvented Batman, then he took familiar characters to an entirely different level with The Dark Knight and finally we end with The Dark Knight Rises - a conclusion that will leave you both satisfied and wanting more.

This could be argued as the most hotly-anticipated film of 2012, and the amount of coverage given to this has been staggering. Yet I applaud myself a bit for not getting too caught up in the hype and going into this movie without too much knowledge or spoilers. I think the more you know about a film going in, the less enjoyment you'll find coming out.

That being said, The Dark Knight Rises continues the path that The Dark Knight went down: conflicts that can't be solved with fancy tools and weapons (though they do help) and characters who have many different levels.

Take the foremost villain, Bane: a brute, a terrorist, a madman? Someone who has no qualms about blowing up a football fields and trapping millions of people in a city with a nuclear bomb. Yet even someone as purely evil as Bane is made out to be has his own story and while you may not feel sympathy, exactly, Nolan gives him just a touch of humanity.

Our story picks up eight years after The Dark Knight: Harvey Dent (aka Two-Face) has been celebrated as a hero - The Dent Act has put away the organized crime in Gotham City, making the streets safe. The blame for his death is put on Batman - and Bruce Wayne has become a recluse - broken in spirit and body. Wayne Enterprises is flailing, after Wayne invested in a form of energy that can power an entire city... but turned into a weapon if falling into the wrong hands, so it sits, languishing, much like his company.

But he is spurned into action, first by a pesky thief who steals his mother's pearls and then from the aforementioned Bane, who is looking to continue the work ofRa's Al Ghul's Shadow Army - mainly by bringing Gotham City to its knees, and then destroying it. His first phase is to bring Wayne Enterprises down - which he does by manipulating the Gotham stock exchange, and get Bruce Wayne ousted.

Although Batman is back, he is not whole. Although his long-standing butler Alfred essentially tells him he has a death wish, he's not willing to hang up the outfit, and this rift between the two eventually leads to Alfred's dismissal. Even though he always feels he has the upper hand, Bane gets the best of him, with the help from Selena Kyle aka Catwoman. Although I was worried Anne Hatheway was a strange choice for the character, she does a great job as the sleek, seductive and ruthless (at times) cat burglar. We don't really get much of a backstory on her, but she's a welcome addition to the cast.

Batman finds himself incapacitated in a "living hell" - a prison deep underground, one that Bane managed to escape from. You can get out by climbing, but that slim hope of escape comes with a steep price - failure means not just injury or death, but the death of that hope as well. Wayne is not just crippled in body, but Bane hopes to completely break his spirit by forcing him to watch as his city devolves into madness and, ultimately, total destruction.

There's not much to stand in his way - stalwart Jim Gordon (always welcome Gary Oldman) is holed up in the hospital, himself a victim of Bane's crew. Hotshot police officer Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is taken under Gordon's wing and is drafted as a detective himself. But the two men can only do so much to keep the city safe. But when all hope seems lost, Wayne finally finds his resolve, his purpose, his life - and returns just in time to save the day... but not without cost.

There are a lot of things The Dark Knight Rises gets right - the characters, both old and new (and some great cameos from Liam Neeson and Cillian Murphy) are given more than one-dimensional treatment. You really feel the weight that Wayne bears - and the scenes between Christian Bale and Michael Caine are some of the most powerful in the film, and they don't even involve fancy vehicles or fighting. Could I have done with a little more background on Hatheway and Marion Cotillard? Maybe, but the film is pretty long the way it is, so maybe cutting back a bit wasn't such a bad idea.

There was a lot of questions about how Bane would sound after early tests made it sound like he was intelligible behind his mask. Nolan tweaked it a bit, and while I didn't think is was huge deal, Tom Hardy did sound a bit muffled. I never missed what he was saying, but I think it lost some of the impact as he sounds, well, like he's talking behind a damned mask. Hardy is nearly unrecognizable, in face and voice, which is a shame. Still, at least they managed to turn a brutish thug into a more well-rounded character, mask and all.

The movie is long, but I don't think it dragged on at all. Plus, I wondered how Nolan was going to end things (seeing as this is the last time he'll be behind the director's chair) but I think he provided one of the best endings to a trilogy - leaving just enough wiggle room to potentially spin-off some characters, you know, if anyone should decide that's the way to go.

While I don't feel this was quite up to the standard that The Dark Knight set, this is still one of the best super hero films out there. I feel bad for whoever is tapped for the inevitable reboot, because they have some major shoes to fill. The anticipation was well worth it as this provides a worthy end to this franchise and Nolan should be proud.