The Bat and the Cat… Fall Flat!
The Dark Knight Rises
Rating: PG-13 Length: 2 hr. 45 min.
Genre: Drama, Action & Adventure.
Directed By: Christopher Nolan.
Written By: David S. Goyer, Christopher Nolan,
Jonathan Nolan, Bob Kane.
Starring: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway,
Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Joseph
Gordon-Levitt.
Four years after The Dark Knight knocked our
socks off with the late Heath Ledger’s dark
portrayal of the Joker, Batman (Bale) is back on
our screens. Complete with old favourites such
as Alfred (Caine) and Commissioner Gordon
(Oldman), The Dark Knight puts them alongside
newbie’s to the franchise like Hathaway as
Selina/Catwoman and Gordon-Levitt as Blake.
While Ledger’s scene-stealing performance is
no longer here, The Dark Knight Rises offers the
audience an equally as disturbed character in
the form of Bane (Hardy), a masked bad guy set
on destroying Gotham City, eight years after
Batman brought down the Joker.
The Dark Knight Rises opens with Gordon talking about how a new act that was inspired
by the late Harvey Dent has almost eradicated all forms of organised crime in the city.
Gordon feels guilty that Batman took the blame for Dent’s death even though he was
trying to bring down the city at the time - a fact that the public are not aware of, while
Bruce Wayne/Batman hides away in his home and hasn’t been seen for years.
During the speech, Selina disgui-ses herself as a waitress and breaks into Wayne’s safe
to steal his mother’s pearls. She escapes by attaching herself to a congressman who is
leaving the event and when he goes missing, Gordon goes to find him before he is
captured by Bane. Gordon manages to escape, but is injured and ends up in hospital
where he promotes Blake to a detective who reports directly to him. Blake knows that
Wayne and Batman are the same person, so when he finds out Bane is plotting
something big, goes to him and asks for him to bring Batman back.
Batman himself takes a bit of a back seat for the first part of the movie and Wayne is
given a chance to shine as his wounded and paranoid self. Bale does well at showing off
a side of his character that we were less aware of before and thanks to this eye opening,
when the Batman does return, we have a new found empathy for what he has sacrificed.
Cotillard, Freeman and Oldman are brilliant as always, but the real stand out star for me
was Gordon-Levitt, who thanks to his ideals and determination, helps move the film
along in its occasional slow moments. Hathaway was at her best delivering shrewd
cutting remarks and while Wayne’s long-suffering butler Alfred normally ends up in the
background, in The Dark Knight Rises he is able to come forward a little more and
appears in two very-near tear jerking scenes.
I thought Hardy did a good job of portraying Bane, but unfortunately his mask made it
hard to understand what he was saying on a couple of occasions and sadly he didn’t give
the same depth to his bad guy as Ledger did to his. The start, middle and end of this film
were brilliant and I have no end of praise for the fantastic action sequences, but
unfortunately the connective scenes did drag and I thought the film could have been cut
by a good 20 minutes.
The soundtrack is well thought out and adds a haunting element to certain scenes,
particularly the events that take place on the football field. The Dark Knight Rises marks
the bowing out of Nolan as the franchise director and I for one will be sad to see him
leave. While his first offering in the form of Batman Begins did little for me, The Dark
Knight gave a real boost to the series and following the success of Nolan’s Inception, you
can see he has brought a big dash of that epicness to The Dark Knight Rises.
Rating: ★★★★
