Movie Review - ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

By Bob Garver

It has been four years since we last saw Bat­man in “The Dark Knight” and two and a half years since I pro­claimed the film to be the best of the decade. Need­less to say, my expec­ta­tions for the “The Dark Knight Rises” were extremely high. While the new film will not be named the best of the decade or even the year (that honor cur­rently goes to the super­hero faux-documentary “Chron­i­cle”), it is nonethe­less sat­is­fy­ing enough to be con­sid­ered a wor­thy finale to Christo­pher Nolan’s supe­rior Bat­man trilogy.

“The Dark Knight Rises” sees Bat­man (Chris­t­ian Bale) long retired. Eight years have passed since his “mur­der” of Har­vey Dent made him a fugi­tive. He has reverted to a full-time role as his alter ego, bil­lion­aire Bruce Wayne. Bruce has become a recluse, only trust­ing of his but­ler Alfred (Michael Caine). His busi­ness, led by Lucious Fox (Mor­gan Free­man) is fail­ing after the expen­sive con­struc­tion of a clean energy device with the capa­bil­ity for mass destruc­tion, though the project may see new life under the eye of peace­ful exec­u­tive Miranda Tate (Mar­ion Cotil­lard). Bruce feels that his best days are behind him when he gets robbed by beau­ti­ful cat bur­glar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway).

The rest of Gotham City is doing a bit bet­ter. Com­mis­sioner Gor­don (Gary Old­man) has locked away thou­sands of crim­i­nals thanks to leg­is­la­tion passed after Dent’s death. A young detec­tive named John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) sees holes in Gordon’s story of how Dent died a hero and does some inves­ti­gat­ing of his own. Things take a turn for the worse when Gor­don gets an acci­den­tal glimpse of behe­moth ter­ror­ist leader Bane (Tom Hardy). He gets the mes­sage out that the city needs the Caped Cru­sader one more time.

Bat­man locates Bane with help of Selina Kyle, who much like him has devel­oped a cos­tumed per­sona that she calls Cat­woman. She leads him to Bane all right, but in a way that sees the two in an instant fist­fight with one another. The pum­mel­ing leads to Bat­man being left for dead in a prison pit while Bane unleashes his mas­ter plan on Gotham. The plan is for the city to destroy itself and then for he and an unknown accom­plice to destroy whatever’s left. The accom­plice turns out to be a char­ac­ter known to those famil­iar with the Bat­man comics and ani­mated series.

The film’s weak­est points come as Bat­man is impris­oned in the pit. It’s such a cliché for the vil­lain to trap the hero instead of just elim­i­nat­ing him. The pit is one of the more easily-beatable vari­a­tions I’ve seen on this for­mula, as the pris­on­ers are allowed daily escape attempts. Is there any­one out there who really thinks that Bat­man is going to meet his end because he couldn’t pull him­self out of a hole? No, it’s just a waste of per­fectly good crime­fight­ing time.

Pit sto­ry­line aside, the film’s first and espe­cially third acts live up to expec­ta­tions. The action sequences are as crisp as they’ve ever been and I appre­ci­ate that the film has enough con­fi­dence in its spe­cial effects to allow so many sequences to take place in broad day­light. The movie doesn’t bring add a lot of orig­i­nal­ity to the fran­chise, but with such a win­ning for­mula in place, can you blame Christo­pher Nolan for play­ing it safe?

Three and a Half Stars out of Five.

NOTE: The film, its mes­sage, and its legacy will for­ever be tar­nished by its asso­ci­a­tion with the recent shoot­ings in Col­orado. The extent of the con­nec­tion has yet to be estab­lished, and even there will be some debate as to its legit­i­macy, but in any event the movie may now be harder for some view­ers to watch. Just remem­ber that the mes­sage of “The Dark Knight Rises” is to be a hero. A mes­sage like that rings true even in the face of devastation.

“The Dark Knight Rises” is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of vio­lence and action, some sen­su­al­ity, and lan­guage. Its run­ning time is 164 minutes.

Con­tact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.

Posted by Bob Garver on Jul 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.