Christopher Nolan currently has no peer to worry about in the world of directing. For a decade now it is hard to come up with another who has had such a strong track record crafting films that are original, creative and commercial.
Actually you can’t.
And now Nolan finds himself with the most challenging film of his career, closing off the Batman trilogy in a fashion worthy of the two former films, both all time greats and pioneers in quality credible super-hero film.
Unfortunately with The Dark Knight Rises although Nolan has made a film that towers above many modern day so called blockbusters, the one person he couldn’t outdo was himself, so although The Dark Knight Rises will undoubtedly land in many 2012 Top Ten lists at year’s end – deservedly so – it is clearly the least of a magnificent modern trilogy.
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8 years have passed since the death of Harvey Dent and the subsequent disappearance of his supposed slayer Batman. Dent’s death has been used as a catalyst for the Dent Act, which targets organised crime in Gotham City.
So while Batman has been absent, it’s not like he has been missed, with such low crime rates city-wide and James Brown’s passing there hasn’t been a caped anything sighted for a long while. In fact aside from a beautiful cat burglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) operating in the area crime seems non-existent. Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and his deputy Foley (Matthew Modine) are essentially kept behind a glass pane with ‘Break only in emergency’ written on it.
With Batman too on the inactive list it might seem an ideal time for his public face Bruce Wayne to let his hair down just a little. Not so. Mr Wayne and loyal servant Alfred (Michael Caine) are holed up in the Wayne Mansion, taking no visitors and making no waves. It seems that the days of dressing up and going out late at nights to meet shady men are over, leave that stuff to John Travolta – OK allegedly – but when three different guys say the same thing…
Wayne Enterprises, the family built company is suffering as well. An ambitious, lucrative and potentially world altering discovery has been shelved by Wayne for fear of it landing in the wrong hands despite the pleas of environmentalist and visionary Miranda (Marion Cotillard). Profits are low; make that non-existent. While Luscious Fox (Morgan Freeman) still has his hands on the wheel, he is merely keeping the business afloat and not leading it into new territory.
So Gotham City thrives while Wayne, Commissioner Gordon, and Wayne Enterprises tread water. Surely good times for all?
Enter Bane (Tom Hardy). This entry’s requisite bad guy and undisputable talking point. The well muscled Hardy wears costumes left over from the Mad Max 2 set, including a protective face mask which muffles his voice. Bane looks scary and menacing enough, and his few action scenes show how formidable he is, however he sounds like a tipsy Sean Connery at lovely English tea party – only you are listening to him from behind a door and therefore can’t understand much of what he says.
A fight near the end with Bane talking muffled helium balloon talk and Batman responding in his gruff ‘I need a Strepsil’ voice was essentially the battle of the indecipherable.
Ultimately Bane lacks the charisma of the Joker and the mystery of Ra’s Al Ghul, but I can’t help but feel that he is the right bad guy in the wrong movie.
Doesn’t matter what I think though, Bane arrives on Gotham’s doorstep and promptly vanishes, no doubt doing something quite nefarious.
In fact for a long while even the attentive might wonder exactly is the point of all these new characters and what exactly they might be called upon to do, and while Nolan is an ambitious and meticulous storyteller and director, I can’t help but feel a good 20 odd minutes couldn’t have been knocked off somewhere with no adverse impact on the film.
(I hear his retort: A mere two hour film can’t be ‘EPIC!’) Let’s just say if you thought it took forever for that damn truck in Inception to hit the water, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
For mine this is where the film suffers, Nolan attempts to better the first two films (and even Inception) by plotting a seemingly never ending series of events that make it harder and harder for the forces of good – namely Bruce Wayne – to triumph. This of course is to make the inevitable victory all the more sweet.
Bruce Wayne finds his own assets and allies are one by one turned against him, with his company at risk of falling into the wrong hands and all of his ‘Bat-Toys’ with it, Wayne is left broke and friendless – Commissioner Gordon being hospitalised and unable to assist.
(On another tangent; any chance Christopher Nolan might use some new actors? Half of Inception is here, and they even recycle Cillian – Scarecrow – Murphy for a bit role near the conclusion of the film. Nolan is like the white Chan-Wook Park).
Then, just when you thought it couldn’t get darker, it gets darker. I applaud Nolan for rooting the entire trilogy in the real world and granting all characters real problems and real emotions, but even people under pressure crack a joke every now and then don’t they?
Hence the second issue I have in The Dark Knight Rises is a lack of humour and the occasional release of tension. Even the presence of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as an idealistic cop named Blake can’t lend the film some ‘Gordon-Levit(t)y’…
There is one great line by Batman early in the film when he realises how offputting it is to have your conversation partner vanish mid-chat, but aside from that TDKR is a largely serious and dry affair, swamped by too many characters and too many sub-plots to tie up. There was one other point where I laughed during this film, a character watches another stoke a log fire, complimenting them on their technique. This leads to an open and honest story from the character’s past…
Let’s step back a second; “You’re good at stoking the fire”? Are you fucking kidding me? Who says that ever? ‘Yesterday was cool, got mad props for my fire poking abilities. About time someone noticed my hours of training in the log arts.’
A few cool points wouldn’t have hurt either, sure the Bat-hovercopter was nice but hardly revolutionary, leaving the Bat-bike and it’s unique quickturn mechanics the undisputed technical highlight of the film. A pity given the toys on display in the first two.
The acting is fine, having actors named Bale, Caine, Oldman and Freeman practically guarantees that. Hardy does his best with the restraints of a giant facial impediment and the polarising nerdy-tough voice, even Hathaway as Catwoman dispelled the doubts I had with her inclusion in the franchise, and it goes without saying that she filled the suit nice…
Ultimately I felt that we the audience were sitting around as if watching a giant roulette wheel that we had placed a large bet on – in this case $30 for a ticket and a large Coke. While the ball rolls around the top you hold your breath, waiting for the result, not looking away for fear of missing the big pay-off. So it was with TDKR, only for the last two hours, the damn ball kept rolling and rolling relentlessly while we waited in bladder-bursting apprehension (if bladders could sue Christopher Nolan would be broke) as if Nolan held his experiment to see if we might just keep watching the Inception top spin on for ever and ever.
The occasional action sequences were momentarily appreciated but not Wow enough to stand on their own, and with more plot to squeeze into 3 hours than seven normal films and too many characters to somehow keep track of, this is the first Batman film where Nolan’s boldness and fearless filmmaking finally came back to bite him on the bum.
Final rating – 8 / 10. The Dark Knight Rises might be, is the weakest link in the best trilogy since The Lord of the Rings. That doesn’t make it a bad film, just a slightly downer of a conclusion when compared to the first two.
You’ll like it. You’ll talk about it. But you’ll likely not revel in it as much as you want to.
