Worth All The Wait

Rating: 10/10 (22 July 2012)

Superhero movies are usually taken to be kid's stuff - entertaining, slick and full of high-octane action sequences. But compared to heavy classy movies with grave stories, they have always been considered childish... until Christopher Nolan made Batman Begins.
The dark world of Batman full of both physical and psychological wars, that started in that movie, went to a sky high excitement level in The Dark Knight... with an epic performance as Joker from Heath Ledger.
The hype for the conclusion of this trilogy was well-expected. Though very few people have doubts on Nolan's craftsmanship after all the movies in his portfolio, there still was a doubt whether the level set by Dark Knight was un-surpassable.
Well, to tell the truth, it still is, in portions at least. But Dark Knight Rises surpasses all expectations and lives up to the hype.
The movie starts slowly with introducing new characters and a broken hollow Bruce Wayne, who has left the mantle of Batman since Harvey Dent's death 8 years ago. The main antagonist Bane is introduced as menacingly as his character. The world of Gotham has changed since then with organized crime out of the media eyes. Apparently peace reins in the city, which is nothing but the silence before the approaching hurricane.
Although most people had forgotten Batman, he still lurks in the secret corners of a few people's mind, who keep asking themselves - will he come back.
And he does come back. At the 2nd half of the movie, the slowly built environmental and psychological chess pieces step towards each other quicker and climax keeps pulping in our heart.
Until this point the movie was everything we expected. But since when does Nolan stays happy meeting the expectations? When the last 20 minutes of the movie starts unfolding its bag of secrets, every single person in the audience will grab the edge of their seats. Those last 20 minutes takes the movie to a new level of insanity and psyched, culminating into a final conclusion that ties every loose corner together ... and gives a new meaning to the saying - "End is a new beginning." Everything and everyone in the movie is worth praising - but the few that really stand out are - Christian Bale as the broken Dark Knight who starts believing in himself afresh, Tom Hardy as the monstrous Bane who almost takes away all the hopes from the audience, Michael Caine as the fatherly butler Alfred Pennyworth, Marion Cotillard as the enticing beauty and the surprising key character Miranda Tate. Anne Hathaway does a good job in her role, but the chemistry between the bat and the cat isn't really there. Gary Oldman keeps the ball going with his old testament cop character Commissioner Gordon. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is also worth watching as a completely new concept character John Blake, specially at the final concluding scene.
But, the award goes to Christopher Nolan, who knows how the audience's mind works and plays with it to perfection. Nolan, you've done it again. It makes me a little sad, thinking that you wouldn't stand behind the camera again to continue from the promising end, or rather, beginning, you've carved with this movie.
But, maybe this is for the best... maybe the Dark Knight does need a well deserved rest.
Salute, to the best & darkest character the Comics world has given us. Salute.