Disturbing but unfullfilling

Rating: 6/10 (11 August 2012)

I thought this was a deeply disturbing but unfullfilling film. Right from the onset you sense the evil that permeates the story as it unfolds. The villain, Bane, is not as psychologically oppressing as the Joker, however, you sense that his pure determination and physical prowess will break and bend the world to his will. Against this is pitted a broken crusader in the from of a desolate Bruce Wayne isolated in his manor. We are being sold the premise that Commissioner Gordon has cleaned up Gotham under the cover of Harvey Dent's authority from beyond the grave. At this point we have already seen references to extraordinary rendition and now we learn that the methods of Gotham's PD has striking similarities to how the U.S. has fought the so-called War on Terror. Prisoners are being held at a Guantanamo-like facility without due recourse, and the sense that something is rotten at the core of government is tangible. A storm is brewing, and neither the people of Gotham, nor its guardians are prepared.
Batman, in my opinion does not even have center stage in his own movie. He is marginalized now, not really trusted by anyone except his life-time servant Alfred and, of course, Jim Gordon who owes him his life. When Batman returns to save the day, he does not rely particularly on his bodily strength and fortitude as he did before. What always made Batman the most special superhero for me, was that he was just a man. Now, half the time he is in a flying machine or on a motor bike which he later, rather handily gives over to the one person - the Catwoman - he chooses to trust despite plenty of warnings not to. Yes, Batman has always use gadgets, but they were wires to increase his velocity and to defy gravity in order to deliver the knock-out punch, by fist. Now, he's just an extension of a machine, firing explosives as he hovers between skyscrapers blowing up his own hardware that Bane's army has taken possession of. It is in the young police officer John Blake that we must look for a true moral conviction and desire to the right thing by simple means and true grit. A sham then, that Joseph Gordon-Leveitt is completely incapable of conveying these emotions.
As for the story, there are some twists and turns in the plot, trying to tie this whole epic together across 3 movies. I still do not know what the League of Shadows is supposed to reflect, or what purpose it has. Trying to place Gotham's fate into a macro context of a world-wide struggle between the established powers of capitalism and the monomaniacal, but still unclear, motivations of the secretive and elusive Ras Al' Gul falls short of delivering any kind of moral lesson or genuine emotion. It is the actions of the agents of madness and violence that make you uneasy, but truly what should scare you are the motivations behind them. In this regard, the League of Shadows is too quirky, too anarchist, and too unclear about its true ambition to be anything to get truly afraid of. What has always been most intriguing about Gotham has been its imperfections and the sense that it's a place that makes it own luck, independent and resolute.
To see the great city and its people become just a facade, a stage, filled with extras for a kind of great battle between forces that really has little to do with the city per se, just doesn't get to you in the way it did when the Joker terrorized the city. Perhaps most strange is the scene where the ragged band of just-freed cops storm against Bane's forces in medieval fashion, two army's face-to-face, clashing in hand-to-hand combat like androids despite the fact that both sides have plenty of fire arms and tactical training. I get a sense that Commissioner Gordon or the fine minds of the Gotham PD really would not have endeavored on such an ill-thought through maneuver. Fittingly then, the actions cuts away from this street mêlée to focus on Batman fighting Bane and we're left guessing how the fight ends.
This movie was designed to be a block-buster. The investment must be recouped, and that means Chris Nolan cannot use all the means required to truly deliver the sucker-punch. It has to be PG-12, and that means it simply does not deliver the graphical violence to really let you feel the inhumanity. Yes, some scenes of material destruction will get at you. A masterfully crafted serial bombing that cuts Gotham off from the world has eerie resonance to real world conflicts and most particularly that of 9/11. But being Norwegian and having endured our own encounter with the Devil on July 22 last year, I cannot but not take seriously the absence of bodily harm that the blows and bullets should have incurred on those who cross the path of Bane and his honchos' brutality. No blood. No screams. Not a gouged eye. It just doesn't get to you.
The way the real protagonist dies in the end is a whimper, just too stupid and far too convenient, uttering a few final words of destiny fulfilled before drawing last breath. No, I am sorry, this was just one movie too far. After the brilliance that was the Dark Knight, this picture fails to deliver the same emotion and to incur the same respect. A tighter manuscript with a shorter run time and a greater emphasis on the true horror that the evil of Bane shows us in flashes of would have made it better. Nothing could come close to the sheer psychological terror of the Joker and the existential questions left by the sheer lack of true meaning behind his actions. Certainly not the League of Shadows.