A fine conclusions to Christopher Nolan's 'Batman' trilogy

Rating: 9/10 (18 March 2017)

Eight years after the events portrayed in 'The Dark Knight' Gotham is a peaceful city but the Batman is still wanted for the killing of Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne has become a recluse. Then one day cat burglar Selina Kyle breaks into Wayne mansion and as well as stealing his mother's pearls she takes a copy of Bruce's fingerprints. She gives these to an accomplice of masked criminal, Bane, an expelled member of the League of Shadows. Bane then launches an attack on the Stock Exchange where he uses Bruce's fingerprints to authorise the transfer of all of his wealth thus bankrupting him. He manages to find Bane but is defeated and left, severely injured in an apparently inescapable prison. It is only then that we learn Bane's ultimate plan; he seizes the core from a nuclear fusion reactor that Wayne Enterprises had developed and, after setting off explosives that cut Gotham off from the rest of the county, announces that he will detonate the device and kill everybody if anybody tries to leave. And so begins his reign of terror. The months pass and Bruce struggles back to health and manages to escape and return to Gotham; he is now up against the clock as it emerges that the bomb is unstable and will soon detonate whether triggered or not.
This film provides a fine conclusion to this trilogy. Bane is a suitable bad villain for this finale and his schemes were the most dastardly yet. He is definitely a human villain not a cartoonish super-villain. He has a good back story although, thanks to a late twist, some of what we are lead to believe isn't quite true. Then there is the fact that this is more a Bruce Wayne film than a Batman film; first he must overcome the death Rachel Dawes which kept him a recluse for eight years then after he finally becomes Batman again and is beaten by Bane he must heal physically and mentally before he can escape. We also have new characters Selina Kyle, an ambiguous thief who may ultimately prove to be a hero or a villain and policeman John Blake who rises from a young uniformed officer to help lead the fightback while Batman was not there. The cast does a fine job; notably returning cast members Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman. New cast members also impress; Tom Hardy is imposing as Bale; one can believe that he could beat Batman in a fight, Anne Hathaway is likable as Selina and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is good as Blake; the closest thing to an ordinary everyman of the film's main characters. There is plenty of spectacular action from an attention grabbing opening scene, through a series of chases and fights to an explosive conclusion. The end nicely wraps up the trilogy while still leaving things open for us to imagine what might happen next. Overall I'm sure fans of the series will enjoy this; I'd certainly recommend the first two films first though.