The Weakest Movie of the Nolan Batman Trifecta is Still Good

Rating: 7/10 (10 April 2013)

One of the strongest points about The Dark Knight was that it had a plot that was complex enough to be interesting, but not so much that you couldn't follow the story. The Dark Knight Rises pushes that boundary to its limits. Eventually things do come together, but it does require some heavy lifting to keep track of everything that's going on..and there's a lot going on.
Eight years have passed since the events of The Dark Knight, and Bruce Wayne has gone into self-imposed exile. The various injuries he's accumulated while chasing bad guys in his bat suit have caught up with him, and we find that he's blown most of his fortune. Early on, a petty thief named Selina (they don't call her "Catwoman" by name) robs Bruce's safe. It turns out that she wasn't after the contents; She was hired to get something else that would be later used against Bruce. In spite of the inauspicious beginning, a weird romantic connection develops between the two. But never mind the complexities of the Bruce/Selina relationship. The real bad guy here is Bane.
And Bane (Tom Hardy) really is one bad dude, the most physically imposing villain Batman has ever faced. He demonstrates this by breaking Batman's back in the first part of the movie, then sending the unmasked Bruce Wayne to a sort of prison pit in some unknown foreign country, while he proceeds to all but destroy Gotham City and put certain residents "on trial" (the "judge" being Dr. Jonathan Crane aka Scarecrow). To make matters worse, Bane has found Batman's stash of toys (including three "tumbler" batmobiles), and he and his followers use them in wreaking havoc on Gotham. Part of what Bane is apparently attempting to do is expose Gotham's hypocrisy, specifically the secret that Batman and Commissioner Gordon kept in the wake of Harvey Dent's death, leading to a series of new anti-crime laws. He even refers to himself as "Gotham's reckoning." There's also another villain who is revealed late in the movie, who's really the one behind all the mayhem.
Some problems I have with this movie include the fact that Bane is an awful lot like a certain other movie villain with a mask (can you say Darth Vader?), with one exception: Bane's mask muffles half the stuff he says. Between that and the complexities of the story, this movie is really hard to follow in places. There are also some not-so-subtle references to the Occupy Wall Street movement made by Selina/Catwoman in particular, who uses the "haves and have-nots" argument to justify her criminal activities. I didn't like what they did with Catwoman in this. Catwoman has always oozed sexuality above all else, and you don't get that here. Part of it is the drab costume, but part of it is Anne Hathaway. She's pretty enough, but doesn't exactly have the sex appeal of, say Scarlet Johanssen as Black Widow in the Avengers. You actually don't see a lot of Batman in this movie..or at least not in his bat suit. What you do see a lot of is Bruce Wayne, who spends the majority of his screen time beaten and broken.
On the plus side, the effects and action sequences are superb (par for the course for Christopher Nolan). The scene where a football field is destroyed in the middle of the game is mind blowing. I don't generally like CGI, but Nolan uses it very effectively here. I also liked the way the movie ended, which left a good taste in my mouth, so to speak. Batman ultimately does save the day, and the surprise ending actually is a happier one than the Dark Knight, and neatly wraps up the third installment of the Nolan batman trilogy. 7.5