You can't deny that he has reinvented the comic book hero film genre (to a degree). Even the new The Amazing Spider-Man has some added grittiness and character drama to it, which you could argue is due to Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. The Dark Knight Rises is Nolan's swan song to Batman and in all fairness, it seems that he has put in as much blood, sweat and tears into this one as he did with the other two.
The Dark Knight Rises is set eight years after the events of The Dark Knight. The people of Gotham City have blamed Batman (Christian Bale) for the atrocities against their city and have heralded Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) a hero of the city, but Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) is sitting on the truth and unsure whether to clear Batman's name. However, before he has a chance to, a new terrorist, Bane (Tom Hardy) is terrorising Gotham by trapping the majority of the police force underground, taking over Batman's armoury and trapping the people of Gotham by destroying all of the bridges in and out of the city and promising to set off an atomic bomb if anyone tries to escape. This forces an unfit Bruce Wayne to don the Batsuit once again and protect the city and reluctantly calls upon local thief, Selena (aka. Catwoman - Anne Hathaway) for help.
Before I properly start my review of The Dark Knight Rises, I feel that I must admit that I'm not a massive Batman fan and I'm by no means a Christopher Nolan fanboy. I fall into the category of finding his films "alright". However, I can't deny that his Dark Knight films have been stunning and seemed to be getting better and better. Many have claimed that The Dark Knight Rises is the perfect end to the perfect trilogy... and while I do agree that it's a very good film, I wouldn't say that it's perfect.
Let's start with the good, and there is a lot of good. The film is visually stunning to look at, which to be honest, you can always count on with Nolan. The opening plane heist scene, which has been covered a lot on various internet sites and even featured heavily in the promos, was brilliantly tense and epic. The ending shot, where Bane is clutching onto the nuclear scientist as the hull of the plane falls around them and then the camera lingers on them as we see the plane hull plummet to the Earth below, was beautiful. The sweeping shots of Gotham city were gorgeous (although a little too reminiscent of New York City - I think I preferred the Gotham City in Batman Begins).
Another positive that I have to mention is the casting of the film. As ever, Bale pulls off a great Bruce Wayne (who spends a lot of this film battered, bruised and ageing in this film) to the then brooding and aggressive Batman. However, I really feel that it's Hathaway the one that steals the show in every scene that she is in. From the moment that we are introduced to her, she shows how to pull off believably how a character can be three-dimensional and have more than just one character trait. Catwoman's development from a cold-hearted bitch who double crosses Batman to the one who arrives last minute to save the day is a little bit predictable, but I can overlook that minor gripe. Tom Hardy as Bane had a tough act to follow from the last villain in The Dark Knight - I don't care if people think I'm jumping on the bandwagon with the Joker, but Heath Ledger's performance was spot on in The Dark Knight. While Hardy does a really good job of playing Bane, his character just felt a little flat compared to The Joker and even compared to Catwoman. While we do learn a little more about Bane in the third act of the film and how he fits into the larger picture, it's not really enough for us to truly empathise with him or understand why he hates Batman and Gotham City so much.
There's also Bane's voice, which sometimes is a little hard to understand. But, if you've read anything about The Dark Knight Rises online, then I'm sure you've seen enough about that.
However, like I said, The Dark Knight Rises is not perfect (something, which I realise is very hard to achieve, so it's not really a criticism in saying it's not perfect.)
The first thing I need to criticise is the pace of the film. I'm not really bothered that the film was nearly three hours long, I can deal with that, but the pace of the film just felt really slow. Now, I sometimes quite like slow films that focus on characters, but The Dark Knight Rises felt like it was delving too much into the politics of Wayne Enterprise and Bruce Wayne in Bane's prison. If we had more of a development between Bruce Wayne and Miranda's (Marion Cotillard) relationship, after the death of Rachel in The Dark Knight, I feel like the film would have packed more of an emotional punch.
Another thing that The Dark Knight Rises was lacking was in it's action and fight scenes. They felt kind of underwhelming, especially the fight scenes between Batman and Bane. While I realise that Nolan needed to show us how powerful Bane was in comparison to Batman in order to try and ratchet up the tension, I would have liked to see Batman fight back just a little bit more. Also, Bane (and another key villain's) demise at the end of the film felt somewhat of an anticlimax. In fact, when Bane was defeated, I almost missed it. Now, I'm not saying that it needed a big dramatic musical crescendo or a dramatic "NOOOO!" to the camera from Bane, but it just needed something a little bit more, just to show that Batman was now the one in charge! Having said that, Bane overall felt a little sidelined in the final battle scene when the second villain behind the master plan was revealed, something that I felt was a bit of a shame, because Bane was built up to be this big badass throughout the rest of the film.
So, while The Dark Knight Rises isn't a perfect end to Nolan's trilogy (and I think I like Batman Begins and The Dark Knight just a little bit better) it is still a very very good film. The main thing that I think The Dark Knight Rises suffers from is trying to pack too much into the film and trying to develop the characters and plot even further than they have been previously (something that a third film in a trilogy can suffer from, because it needs to prove that the characters and plot are still 'fresh'.)
**** / *****
No comments:
Post a Comment