Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

*** My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families of the Aurora shooting last night. Any shooting is tragic, but to happen at such a neutral, family environment is sickening and terrifying. The shooter is a terrorist and should be treated as so. ***

Eight years have passed since the death of Harvey Dent. Batman and Commissioner Gordon have decided to hide the truth to keep the street criminals behind bars. Batman has taken the blame and has not been seen since the night of Dent’s death….until a mysterious figure known as Bane comes to Gotham with a terrorist plot that holds all of Gotham hostage.

Christopher Nolan has forever set the blueprint of what the standards of comic book films should be. Reflecting back on this trilogy, Nolan has created some of the best storytelling I have ever seen and he should greatly be praised for his accomplishments, so allow me to praise him for a moment. As I caught up on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, I paid close attention to the detail he puts in his films. He really raised the bar between Begins and Dark Knight. The action sequences are beautiful, notice how he hardly uses explosions, and when he does, it’s not a CGI fest, it’s almost a humble explosion. It’s believable. The characters are believable and the circumstances are real. He’s created a masterpiece of a series and that’s what the film industry needed.

The same can be said for what he has done in The Dark Knight Rises, except once again he upped the bar. The cinematography is top notch in this one. I never thought watching a city being destroyed from the inside could be shot so beautifully. I really enjoyed the final showdown taking place during the day, a rare occurrence in film. Directors need to be lined up around the block with notepads on how to shoot action sequences. The Dark Knight Rises is a truly beautiful film.

Not a lot needs to be said about Heath Ledger, and they don’t in this film. In fact he is the only character from the series not to be mentioned in this installment. Ledger’s performance was one for the ages, but Tom Hardy makes his own name for himself as Bane. Unlike the love/hate relationship The Joker had for Batman, Bane is a pure terrorist. He wants to watch Gotham burn and he kills without question. The sound mixing used for Bane’s voice is the cherry on top making him a truly terrifying character.

Anne Hathaway portrays Selina Kyle/Catwoman spot on. She is neither hero nor villain; she plays each scenario to what’s the best advantage for her. She has some great scenes as Selina Kyle, who appears determined to make Bruce Wayne miserable for some reason, stealing a pearl necklace from his home and then later telling a parking attendant she is his wife. The chemistry between Bale and Hathaway was much more memorable then the Keaton/Pfeiffer from Batman Returns. Now if we can all forget about that Halle Berry film, we could have another franchise on our hands.
Bale gave his best performance yet. He toned down the Batman voice which was pleasing for I think everyone. But he really takes the backseat in this film which I think hurt it some. He spends a large chunk of the film out of commission and doesn’t have a lot to do.

The supporting cast was almost too good this time. Michael Caine gave some heartwarming moments. He only pops up at the beginning and end, but I’ve loved the chemistry between Alfred and Bruce throughout the entire saga. I wish I could have had just a little more Alfred as Caine’s final performance of him. Gary Oldman is finally given more to do as Commissioner Gordon. While the city is under siege, he is one of the few who are able to their own while Batman is out of commission.

New to the franchise is Joseph Gordon-Levitt who plays Officer John Blake. Blake takes on the role of Gordon’s right hand man while Gordon recovers in the hospital and plays a very pivotal part in the film. In fact his part was entirely too large in the film and that is coming from a Levitt fan. He was fantastic in the film, but this is a Batman film and Levitt is in the film double the amount of time Bale is.
This leads us to the main flaw in the film, the lack of Batman. With a runtime of 2 hours and 47 minutes, there is no excuse for the lack of Batman scenes the film experienced. There wasn’t nearly enough, plain and simple. It took forever for Batman to hit the screen and once he does it’s not long after until he disappears for the entire middle of the film. It needed more.

Not only did it need more Batman, but it needed more of Batman interacting with Bane. Bane does some serious damage in this film, more so than The Joker ever dreamed of doing. Batman has to redeem himself, and the film is building up to this for two and a half hours. And once it finally arrives, it sizzles out just as it gets going. I was so blindsided by this, I was sitting in the theater expecting at least another thirty minutes of the film because I didn’t think there was any way that was the final stand Batman took.

The conclusion of the film is definitely a unique one. It took me some time to warm up to it, but after much thought I finally decided I liked it.

This might shed some light on it for those scratching their heads like I was, and of course, it’s spoiler free.

There are currently four different Batman comic titles in print, along with hundreds of stand-alone graphic novels. The four titles each have their own story and after six issues, the story is resolved and then begins a new story. What is unique about the graphic novels is that the writer can do whatever he wants with the story; it has no effect on what is going on in the on-going comic series, these are often referred to as multi-verse stories. Once I thought about that, it occurred to me, this is what Nolan has done with his Batman trilogy. He told the story he wanted to tell, borrowing elements of all the best titles. Even though the ending isn’t straight out of the comics, it’s straight out of Nolan’s, and he deserved to go out on his terms…..and he did.

Final Verdict: 7/10