A Subversive Achievement That Is Easy To Admire, But Hard To Like.

Rating: 6/10 (9 August 2012)

"The Dark Knight Rises" sees trilogy director Christopher Nolan's thematic vision straight-through to its logical and supposed end, and if anything, it shows that Nolan is probably the director-to-beat for dramatic superhero storytelling.
After the candy-confectionery "The Avengers" earlier this summer with its equally huge crowd-pleasing mash-up of graphic novel heroes and heroines, this film is like a brutal poison-pill of apocalypse and anger.
It is certainly one of the most surprisingly subversive Big-Studio pictures ever to twist the nose of big targets like capitalism, socialism, the issue of police states and definition of law & order, as well as both sides of the environmental movement.
If the film is a success, it certainly is exciting that in this era of 'safe' cookie-cutter movie-making, director Nolan was given carte-blanche to create a sequel to a universally-beloved franchise with such an overarching, nihilistic scenario. Surely ticket buyers may not have had to factor into or wrestle with such counter-oppressive messages in their Batman popcorn entertainment before, but the film is a curious delivery system of unsettling real-world observations wrapped in the mythos of a cartoon character.
The picture's epic scope contains an abundance of dazzling technical achievements filtered through a fractured prism of comic-book storytelling coupled with plot elements ripped from today's headlines, such as the Occupy movement to the Wall Street meltdown. It's excessively violent, sometimes shockingly so.
Despite "The Dark Knight Rises" solid, illustrious pedigree in front of and behind the camera, as an entertainment, the film lacks the wit, creativity and viewer release of previous installments of the franchise. Perhaps sacrificed in a percussive effort to create a sinister tone that may play well to some, Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises" amounts to a dizzying, bombastic 'big-ideas' canvas that - for better or worse - re-frames the overall thematic structure of his series.
The film's big caveat is that it recognizes that Bruce Wayne is an older, beaten man, and not a superhero of some amazing cosmic superpower. Despite of all of the possible gimmicks and technological frou-frou that the character of Wayne might have at his disposal to dispatch bad guys and save the world, Christian Bale's character is reduced to a physical human being who is pummeled endlessly at the mercy of the film's main villain, the confused patriot Bane (actor Tom Hardy) - whose expressive face is seen only in a flashback.
A good film is best with a good villain. The Bane character anchors the film as an intriguing - if enigmatic - adversary to Batman, with careful goals and an early devious Macguffin plot. However by the end Bane is reduced to an angry avatar with nothing but hate for all human race, and no way to beat him.
In the film's final reels, "The Dark Knight Rises" trades its expected superheroics in to revel in a non-stop onslaught of physical violence, humiliation and brutal force that is both indignant and mostly over the top. TDKR lacks the canny outplotting of previous entries in the series, and instead takes a leisurely 150+ minutes to reinforce that this is not a fantasy film, but in fact an unwinnable sturm un drang.
For the first time in a Batman entertainment, I found this picture's constant affront distressing and off-putting to the point of better judgment urging me to leave the theatre and do something happy and more enjoyable with my time. I stuck it out.
Easy to admire but very hard to like, "The Dark Knight Rises" is one of the most aggressively depressing, joyless movies I have ever sat through.