“And why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick
ourselves up.” These are the famous lines uttered by Bruce Wayne’s father in
2005’s “Batman Begins.” These are also the lines that echo back to us now in
the final chapter of director Christopher Nolan’s epic Batman trilogy. After
rescuing this franchise from dismal lows, Nolan forever changed the superhero
movie and raised the bar for anyone else working in this genre. Having shown us
that a Batman movie can be treated as seriously as any other ensemble crime
thriller and can create legitimate Oscar buzz, perhaps he raised the bar too
high for even himself to reach again.
“The
Dark Knight Rises” takes us eight years after the events of 2008’s “The Dark
Knight.” Christian Bale returns as Batman/Bruce Wayne, who has retired and now
lives as an injured hermit in the Wayne manor. Gotham city has been rejoicing
in a renaissance of peace created by new laws based on the false assertions of
the supposed heroic death of their old District Attorney Harvey Dent (who was
actually a murderous psycho) and the violent crimes of Batman (who was actually
the real hero). This all changes when a new villain played by Tom Hardy, a
mysterious madman named Bane, comes into town with an evil plan to destroy the
city from its entire bureaucratic infrastructure, out into the streets. Batman
is then forced to return when the prisoners are set free, the law has been shut
down, and an entire island section of the city becomes abandoned by the
government as a hostile war-zone.
Other plots include Anne Hathaway as the slinky burglar
Catwoman, who seems to be playing both sides, a young police officer played by
Joseph Gordon Levitt, who inspires Bruce Wayne to dawn his cape and cowl again
and Marion Cotillard as a Wayne-Corp share-holder, who has her interests in
Bruce as well as a recent nuclear power source developed by Wayne-Tech. How
this movie handles all of these different plot threads is sometimes jarring and
in the wrong proportions.
This
movie is a worthy companion to its predecessors but it is certainly the weakest
of the three and it feels the least like a Batman movie. Much of the first act
spends too much time reminding the audience what has taken place before hand
and setting up all of the plot-dominos that have to fall into place. The eight
year jump between this film and the last is unnecessary and just creates more
hoops the story has to go through to get to what it really wants to do. The
third act becomes a twist-o-rama, which then begins to fuse these disparate
parts together but at the expense of the first two thirds of the movie that
feels a bit convoluted and confusing at times.
Ultimately, this film seems to be thematically
muddy. “Batman Begins” was a character study about a man’s search for identity
in the face of tragedy. “The Dark Knight” was about the uphill fight between order
and anarchy and their effects on the nature of mankind. “The Dark Knight Rises”
never seems to be as focused. Is it
about a fallen hero and his redemption? Is the subtext about the occupy
movement? Is it about when the fight is worth fighting for? The answer to all
of these questions is yes and no. It is an ambitious film and when it’s good
it’s really good, but much of it is frustrating and it feels like Christopher
Nolan had hijacked his own franchise to make a politically taut action film
that incidentally has Batman in it.
Grade: C+
Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/July-2012
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