This is from empireonline.com
Plot
Eight years after Batman disappeared, blamed for murder, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is a wounded recluse, but Gotham is vibrant
— until masked maniac Bane (Tom Hardy) decides it’s high time to bring the city down. Facing this new threat and mysterious cat
burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), Wayne decides the Dark Knight must rise, once again.
Review
As The Dark Knight Rises, so has anticipation. In 2005, when Christopher Nolan rebooted and resuited Batman, the cinematic reputation
of the Caped Crusader was at a pitiful low after the gaudy debacle of The Film That Shall Not Be Named. Now, a short seven years later,
Nolan could deliver the print of his trilogy topper in a chariot drawn by flame-breathing unicorns with diamond eyes and some people
would still shrug and say, “Meh. It’s not as impressive as The Dark Knight.” In this — as within Rises itself — he could be said to be
the victim of his own success. He raised the bar so high, no-one could be expected to clear it. Still, whether you believe this betters
Begins or eclipses Knight, it is certainly a satisfying conclusion to what is now — we’re calling it — the best superhero series of all
time.
Not that Nolan ever really wanted his Batman to
|
|
be ‘super’ — instead, he posed what proved to be a compelling question: what if this were real? Sure, it’s hardly Ken Loach’s Batman
(though we’d pay to see that: about a Hackney bat-wrangler with anger issues), but Nolan bends more rules of physics than he breaks, with
his heart focused on the heart of Bruce Wayne: a child traumatised by the murder of his parents and raised with a rage he cannot quench.
Rises asks other probing questions: Can you redeem without sacrifice? Can revenge bring peace? What the bloody hell is Tom Hardy saying?
Actually, the preview footage palaver about Bane’s babble is largely irrelevant: he may sound like Sir Ian McKellen gargling meths in a wind
tunnel, but the verbal clarity of the masked, muscled monster is never as important as his brute bulk (though he does have some memorable
vocal barbs). Hardy looks like he could have played the Hulk — with a CG Bruce Banner — and is more than convincing as the man who could break
the Bat. For the first time, perhaps ever, you really worry for Batman, with his armoured suit unable to disguise a relative physical frailty,
his body worn down by years of putting it in the literal line of fire for the citizens of Gotham.
Bane is not fuelled simply by whatever pumps through his mask, either, as Alfred (Michael Caine) observes: “I see the power of belief.” The
|
