The Dark Night Returns

Rating: 9/10 (20 June 2005)

I've always been a fan of the Batman series. Tim Burton created films with dark undertones and flamboyant villains. After he and Keaton left, the series became extremely epic if losing some of its appeal. I was beginning to think the series would never recover.
Even in the Burton days, however, I always felt that something was missing from the series. The movies were great looking with great action, but they seemed to have a huge difficulty understanding why and how a rich orphan would be compelled to vigilante justice and dress like a flying mammal. When asked why in 1989's Batman, Wayne stated "Because no one else can." I liked the movie, but that just sounds like a bored writer taking the easy way out.
Christopher Nolan, in this latest and greatest installment, has made an entire film on the premise of that question. He provides a deeper look into Bruce Wayne, who in the previous films was shown as a bored billionaire who wants to make some halfassed contribution to society by buying gadgets and hanging junkies off rooftops. Now, he's a tortured soul who comes to the realization that before he can exorcise Gotham's demons he has to exorcise his own.
The film opens in a Tibetan prison where Wayne has confined himself so he can fight the inmates. When a hulking Asian goon informs him, "This is Hell and I am the devil," Bruce nonchalantly replies, "You're not the devil. You're practice," before unleashing his rage onto him and five other inmates. The guards lock him up for protection, but Bruce insists he needs none. "Not yours, theirs!" He is recruited by the League of Shadows and journeys into his own fears that he might turn it against the villains of Gotham. During this time, he is trained by Liam Neeson, who reveals harsh truths about his society, justice, and his past, "Your parents' death wasn't your fault...it was your father's!" Nolan delivers these philosophies as devoutly as DeMill delivered the Ten Commandments, but when Wayne's training ends, he realizes that the League is no less corrupt than the villains they fight.
He returns to Gotham having destroyed the League's headquarters, killed all its members, and been declared legally dead after an eight year absence. He returns to a city that is not only corrupt and run down, but in denial. One of the things I loved about the film was the fact that it took time to develop Gotham's history. It never fully recovered from the Depression that hit it twenty years earlier, the city's worst criminals are running the show, and a deranged psychiatrist conducts unnatural experiments at Arkham Asylum.
Bruce struggles to gain the necessary components to make Batman a reality while still maintaining a playboy persona to avoid suspicion. He slowly masses his resources while immediately plunging into war against an entire city of enemies. By the end of the film little has actually gotten better, but Gotham has a symbolic hope from their new hero. Bruce Wayne, however, has disappeared. He is a mask that Batman wears.
This film is not afraid to delve into the true nature of the basest of human emotions and conditions. It provides honesty and realism to a genre that so often lacks it. The questions are not easy, but the answers are even harder.
FOUR STARS...the best superhero film of all time