I was a little worried,walking into The Dark Knight Rises that I would not be able to watch it without thinking, in the back of my mind at least, of the shooting in Colorado that claimed the lives of a dozen people.
As it turns out, while I was not completely able to keep that tragedy out of my mind, I was still able to enjoy a truly compelling film, reportedly the last Batman film Christopher Nolan, the director who has brought the Bat franchise to unprecedented heights, will ever make.
Eight years after Batman (Christian Bale) took the blame for the death of Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) the city of Gotham, thanks to legislation known as "the Dent Act" that has apparently removed parole and short-circuited due process, organized crime has been all but eradicated. In that same span of time, Batman has apparently disappeared altogether while his alter-ego, billionaire Bruce Wayne, has turned into a recluse.
That changes, however, when, during an event held at Wayne Manor commemorating Dent's martyrdom, Bruce is burgled by a thief masquerading as one of his maids (Selina Kyle). Never missing a trick, Bruce is able to deduce that what Kyle was after was really his fingerprints, which in fairly short order sets him on the trail of someone far more dangerous than a simple thief, the masked terrorist known as Bane (Tom Hardy), a powerful, terrifying figure with close ties to Bruce's past whose master plan could have explosive consequences for Bruce as well as all of Gotham City. Bruce dons the cape and cowl again for the first time after nearly a decade away, but the challenge ahead of him will be unlike any he has ever faced.
Considering that the movie is loaded with twists and surprise revelations, some of them clever, others not so much, I'll refrain from discussing any more plot points at this point and simply limit myself to a review of the film, which I found absolutely splendid.
The bad-guy-taking-revenge-on-the-hero-for-the-defeat-of-a-previous-bad-guy isn't the freshest storyline around, as plots go, but as I love to say, it's all in the execution, and Nolan and company, with their variation of this particular plot, have done themselves proud here. From the characterizations to the action set pieces this film is uniformly outstanding.
Christian Bale, in his last outing as Batman, turns in a fantastic performance. Sure the "cookie monster" Batman voice is still a little grating, but Nolan actually remedies the situation by having Bale spend more time as Bruce Wayne, a bit of a throwback to Batman Begins. Anne Hathaway is delightful as Selina Kyle, who is actually never referred to in this film as Catwoman. I love how Hathaway really invests herself in her roles; for me she was one of the few bright spots of the otherwise forgettable Alice in Wonderland a couple of years ago, and she shows the same energy and dedication here that she did to that role, and even more, considering she's got more than a few fight scenes here. Notably she also infuses the proceedings with humor it wouldn't otherwise have. Tom Hardy as Bane is a little harder to rate considering he spends almost the entirety of his screen time behind a mask, but a good benchmark would be to rate his performance next to that of Hugo Weaving in V for Vendetta, in which that actor had to spend the whole movie masked. Weaving still edges out Hardy in terms of pure performance, but considering that the Australian is a much more experienced actor than the Brit, Hardy's performance is still quite commendable. Finally, among the actors new to the saga the real treat for me was Joseph Gordon-Levitt as young police officer John Blake. I've long enjoyed this guy's work, especially the recent bittersweet romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, and while he doesn't deliver an especially outstanding performance, his optimistic, bright-eyed take on Nolan's clever, dedicated police officer is a pleasure to watch; in a movie that is as deliberately, unrelentingly dark as this one, characters like Hathaway's witty Kyle and Gordon-Levitt's indefatigably optimistic Blake serve as welcome foils. Oscar-winning hottie Marion Cotillard is a bit wasted here; she does not make much of an impression as Miranda Tate, even if she turns out to be more important to the story than the viewer is originally led to believe.
Series veterans Gary Oldman as Commissioner Jim Gordon, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, and Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth continue to give Batman's crucial supporting case members the heft they deserve, though Fox and Gordon have considerably less to do in this film than in the last two, while Caine's Alfred gets the opportunity to flex some dramatic muscles.
In terms of the action playing out, at nearly three hours the movie did feel a little long to me at some points, but it's hard to fault Nolan for his very deliberate pacing. What I can fault Nolan for, though, is giving me the opportunity to consider plot holes and logical gaffes by stretching out the running time as he did. All Hollywood blockbusters have holes in their plots; this is almost a rule of thumb. The trick has always been keeping things moving too briskly for the viewer to want to pay attention, with the flaws surfacing during the second or third viewings. By making the film as long as he did, though, Nolan gave me plenty of time to wonder why certain things were the way they were, though I won't go into them to avoid spoiling anything.
Not only that, but a lot of his topical references felt a little too heavy-handed and a little simplistic. The "99 percenters" who overran Gotham City at the threat of annihilation (though not quite of the kind that the actual United States is facing) were basically depicted as mindless rabble right out of Charles Dickens' take on the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities, complete with a mob mentality and kangaroo courts. The tattered American flags depicted at one point in the story were about as subtle as the giant American flag behind Spider-Man in the last of Sam Raimi's Spider-man movies. One upside of this aspect of the plot, though, was a welcome cameo from Cillian Murphy as Dr. Jonathan Crane.
Flaws notwithstanding, though. Nolan has really ended his tenure on Batman on a high note, and he really deserves a round of applause for this. He had nothing to do with the tragedy that took place in Colorado, and while this film will be indelibly associated with that horrible incident, those who have seen it will always remember its quality, or at least, to my mind, they should.
Score: 4.5/5
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