The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises is the last in a special Batman trilogy directed by Chris Nolan.  Those that have seen Batman Begins and The Dark Knight will be familiar with his style, hard hitting, full of action, dramatic beyond belief.  Taking most of the comic out of the adaptation but leaving the camp comedy in.

I cried watching Batman Begins, the emotional loss of Wayne's parents really got to me.  I was emotional watching The Dark Knight, sad over the loss of Heath Ledger after his finest work and the slow death of Batman the hero into Batman the fugitive.

The Dark Knight Rises is the fantastic finale with a twist.  The action and acting faultless.  Bruce Wayne after many years of becoming a recluse, comes out of the shadows to reclaim his city after new villain Bane wreaks havoc across Gotham and brings it to its knees.

Bringing the old crew back together, Wayne with the help of Alfred becomes fully operational as Batman, suffers a setback when he realises his 8 year hiatus has left him in substandard fitness, he is left with a dilemma while the city is under siege.

The action is flawless as is the story arc to the climactic finish.  It is an amazing film and I could watch it again.  It is however flawed in a few ways that makes it miss its top spot and only gets 4 stars from me.

I had hoped Christian Bale would get rid of the comedy voice but low and behold its back, lower and camper than ever.  It ruins the character so much and would have preferred him keeping Wayne’s voice making him far more real.  Tom Hardy didn’t even need to be in the film at all.  With the mask that almost completely covers his face, we never really see his face long enough to see him ‘act’ through the mask.  Instead we see a rather beefy man with the comedy voice that could have been just about any wrestler out there with a voice that can lead in any E4 show very loudly.  Hardy was wasted in this role, it would have been good to see him without the mask to see the man before the mask and add to his character.

Controversially I didn’t like Anne Hathaway as Catwoman.  Sure she can switch between the girl next door to the pussy cat to the hard faced bitch quite quickly but she doesn’t have the sex appeal and raw raunchiness that Michelle Pffieffer had/has as Catwoman in the earlier films.  I do think she is a beautiful woman but she always has that girl next door look and can’t do slutty nearly as well as Pfieffer can.  That said, she is great as Batman’s ally and provides a bit of fun in an otherwise dark film.

There could have easily had about half an hour cut out of the middle of the film, it didn’t add too much to the story or action for me and wasted too much time.

Very unhappy with the fact that the amount of money spent on this film can only supply some substandard CGI in too many places.  If it’s not good, don’t put it in the film.

Despite all the bad flaws, I loved the plot twists at the end in the last half hour or so, even though much of it was alluded to throughout the film, they weren’t any less enjoyable or surprising.  I will be honest, I did love the first and second film more but the standout performances from Joseph Gordon Levitt and Michael Caine were quite amazing and made it all worthwhile.

A fantastic film if you are willing to let a few things go.  That said I am going to see it again in the cinema.  And there aren’t that many films I would see twice at the cinema, so that is saying something.