The Dark Knight Rises

This film is, as many have called it, the most anticipated and franchise dependant feature since Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom menace, and rightly so. Christopher Nolan and his excellent team have brought to life an immense vision of the superhero created by Bob Kane in both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, both being hits with critics and fans alike.

Nolan has become one of the best new directors of our times and his army of followers believe he can deliver a brilliant end to his Batman saga.

I can assure you, he has.

Starring Christian Bale as the returning Batman/Bruce Wayne, Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle (A.K.A. Catwoman) and Gary Oldman as Commissioner James Gordon, eight long years have passed since the end of The Dark Knight. With Batman forced into exile due to taking responsibility for the actions of Harvey Dent, no one has seen him since the night the aspiring district attorney died. The passing of the Dent Act has however helped Gordon to clean up the streets of the city of Gotham and bring about a time of peace without need for the Batman. Unfortunately Bane and his crew hope to spoil that on a huge mission to wreak havoc on Gotham, and Bruce Wayne must don the cape and cowl once again to restore the balance.

Bale gets to do a lot more than growl, returning more to Batman Begins than The Dark Knight as we get to see much more of Bruce Wayne, who goes through almost as much building as in Batman Begins. We get to watch the tired and aging former billionaire pushed back out into the world and then realise that you don’t get to win by just being Batman. His whole ideology has to be reworked, and, in the words of the immortal Ra’s Al Ghul, becomes “more than just a man… a legend”.

Many people had worries whether Anne Hathaway, one of the only major actors new to working with Nolan, would be able to do Selina Kyle (the nearest we get to ‘Catwoman’ is newspaper headlines) justice, but I can assure you she is a great fit, and far more sultry than I imagined she would be. She is, as in the comics, not exactly trustworthy, and is out to gain the spoils of the rich now feeling more protected thanks to Gordon. She is skilled and deadly, and gets to kick plenty of butt alongside Batman.

Jim Gordon, having got to the top of Gotham’s police department, is man who has sacrificed so much for justice. He has able to pull the city out of the ground and gained the trust of every officer in the service. However when Bane strikes, Gordon has to out on his own again and round up as much help as possible for Batman in an attempt to stop Bane’s plan.

And what a plan it is. Tom Hardy is pretty damn scary as Bane, a mercenary with a plan of his own. Concerns that he is hard to understand through his mask are justified at points, but mostly he is very coherent, although still raspy and metallic. In The Dark Knight we saw the Joker causing fear and chaos to break the city, but this time Bane is far more clinical. He is set on one goal and has a master plan that he implements step by step. He forces the caped crusader to his limits, making him crawl out of the pit of his broken spirit, and maybe that may not be enough.

Besides the main cast there are two that stand out: Joseph Gordon-Levitt is John Blake, a “hot-head” cop Gordon naturally takes under his wing, who becomes another Batman can trust, and Marion Cotillard, who plays Miranda Tate, new board member at Wayne Enterprises and potential love interest for Bruce Wayne.

This film is on a scale not seen since the black and white epics of yesteryear. Nolan’s hankering to create as much of the bigger scenes without relying on visual effects really pulls off with hundreds of extras, cars, and explosions you feel rumble through your skin.

The stakes here are well and truly raised as Bane executes each step of his deadly plot with precision. As usual the superb cover-up by Nolan and everyone involved has stopped almost every essential element from reaching the outside world, and so it is hard to say much without spoilers on every level. I will say that some of the rumours are true, some are half true.

Though this end for Batman is not without its faults, there are very few and therefore few people responsible for making them. The cast, new and old, are superb and the action is brilliant and awe inspiring. Though some plot points are a little predictable there are plenty of twisting moments to make up for them. The only let down was one climactic effects shot (again, trying to remain spoiler free) where after the scale of everything else, something that big seemed like it should have had more weight behind it.

Overall, a truly brilliant piece of cinema, and will please both comic book fans and film lovers alike. An extraordinarily written, directed, acted and every-other-category film, a triumph of vision and probably the best superhero film we’ll get in a long while.

A Must-See. 9.5/10.