A satisfying, though not perfect conclusion

Rating: 8/10 (17 May 2015)

Like The Empire Strikes Back, Wrath Of Khan and Mortal Kombat 2, the second movie in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy upped the ante from the first, leaving four years for Batman fans to wonder is the third chapter going to better a film that's not just a good superhero movie, but a good movie in it's own right?
The short answer, is no. The longer, more interesting answer is an optimistic "perhaps."
After an impressive sequence featuring a midair hijacking of a plane, the movie picks up a number of years after the showdown between Batman and Harvey Dent that left Dent dead and Batman labelled a killer, to leave organized crime members in prison through Dent's crack down on organized crime in The Dark Knight. Batman hasn't been seen since and Bruce Wayne has been a recluse in Wayne Manor for years.
Wayne is robbed of his mother's pearls and his fingerprints by Selina Kyle, who also manages to kidnap a congressman and manages to get Jim Gordon hospitalized in what can only be described as a series of unfortunate events, turns them over to John Daggett who turns them over to Bane, an excommunicated member of Ra's al Ghul's League of Shadows and vigilante, who in turn ruins what's left of Wayne Enterprises, after a nuclear energy plan is suspended indefinitely and bankrupts Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne allows control of his company to Miranda Tate and
Bane soon turns his attention to destroying Gotham, finishing what Ra's Al Ghul started in Batman Begins. Betrayed and led to Bane by Selina Kyle, who is chasing a way to clear her criminal record to start over, Batman is beaten and taken to a foreign prison Bane imprisons the majority of Gotham's police force underneath the city, and takes over Wayne Enterprise's nuclear reactor, as well as Batman's armoury, turning the reactor into a mobile bomb that becomes ever unstable, protected by a number of "Tumblers" or bat-mobiles.
Bruce Wayne heals and soon escapes the prison, after hearing stories from his fellow inmates about the child of Ra's al Ghul, who escaped the prison and makes it back into Gotham hours before the bomb detonates and then with the help of Jim Gordon, Lucius Fox, Miranda Tate, a reformed Selina Kyle and some cop that turns out to have the name "Robin," Batman confronts Bane and tries to stop the bomb from detonating. Only he is betrayed again, this time by the child of Ra's al Ghul, Miranda Tate- not Bane, as heavily implied by the talk of the child who was born in a prison. After Bane dies, Tate tries to keep the bomb in her possession until she dies when she crashes the truck she's driving, then Batman attaches the bomb to his fancy flying toy called "the bat" and flies away from Gotham, where the bomb detonates and we're led to believe that Batman dies.
Except he doesn't and turns up in Florence with Selina Kyle. Cue the credits.
Although the acting performances may not be on the same level as Heath Ledger's Joker, you get the feeling that the stakes are much higher. The Joker does things like bomb hospitals, kills a lot of policemen and rob mob banks, and while that's not exactly model behaviour, it's not quite on the same level as holding a city to ransom with a nuclear bomb. That said, Liam Neeson's Ra's al Ghul also tries to destroy Gotham in a more convoluted way, while in cahoots with The Scarecrow, Bane's iron fist over the city is again, on another level than this attempt to destroy Gotham.
Several small things in this movie leave that bitter taste after it's finished, firstly there's Selina Kyle's relationship with Bruce Wayne. She steals his mother's pearls, she then steals his Lamborghini, betrays him to Bane, and is given the little Bat Bike and tells Batman that she's going to save herself while Gotham is destroyed. Even though she comes back and kills Bane and redeems herself somewhat, for me at least, her character's development is very "American". By that I mean that it's probably the happy ending that test audiences or studio execs wanted to see. There's an unnatural balance to the relationship that doesn't sit well. It would appear that Bruce Wayne has never heard the old saying "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me."
In his brief appearance, Alfred spends most of his time on screen bickering with Bruce Wayne and eventually tells Bruce that his beloved Rachel Dawes, who died in The Dark Knight thanks to The Joker, intended to marry Harvey Dent and then quits, not to be seen for the rest of the movie, until the very end.
The character of Bane has been depicted previously as a sycophant of Poison Ivy in Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin, but like other characters present in the Burton/Schumacher movies, the character has taken on a new and improved role, not relegated to being just a henchman. Until you realize that he was essentially doing the bidding of his girlfriend's dead father, which took a little of the shine away from Tom Hardy's performance. That's the difference between the Joker and Bane in the Nolan universe. The Joker seems to do these insanely criminal, yet elaborate things for the sake of raising hell for the citizens of Gotham, as if he's just seeing how far his plan can go and Bane has the idea of destroying Gotham, because Batman killed Ra's al Ghul a number of years before. That comparison should be enough to convince anyone that The Dark Knight is probably a better movie, but The Dark Knight Rises' stakes are much, much higher.