Eight years on, a new terrorist leader, Bane (Tom Hardy), overwhelms Gotham’s finest, and the Dark Knight (Christian Bale) resurfaces to protect a
city that has branded him an enemy.
Before a hero can rise, he must suffer a fall, and fall the Dark Knight quite spectacularly did the last time around, taking the rap for crimes he didn’t commit, marking himself as a vigilante pariah and even letting Heath Ledger (The Joker) steal the reviews. No way that’s happening in this last installment. The Dark Knight Rises is the finale of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy,a comic-book tale that has gotten darker than anyone thought possible is now careening toward a burst of light — possibly a nuclear blast — at the end of the tunnel.
Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy has always focused on the psychology of evil, and this time the director is looking more at evil’s sociological implications. Bat gizmos or no, The Dark Knight Rises has both feet planted firmly in the real world. The spectacle is considerable, pumped up by a Hans Zimmer score so thundering that it pretty much drowns out the dialogue in some spots.
And if a couple of Morgan Freeman’s (Bruce Wayne’s inventor Lucius Fox) bat-gizmos seem sort of standard-issue — a big-wheeled bat-cycle, for instance, that’s not very interesting until it corners — he and the rest of the characters keep things plenty compelling, whether they’re old friends like Michael Caine’s protective butler, Alfred, Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon, or new ones, like Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s earnest police officer, and two potential romantic partners for Wayne, Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman) and Marion Cotillard’s Miranda Tate.
As you might expect from the creator of Inception and Memento, there are surprises both in the story and in the storytelling. But the biggest surprise may just be how satisfying Nolan has made his farewell to a Dark Knight trilogy that many fans will wish he’d extend to a 10-part series, at least.
The Dark Knight Rises is showing:
Fri Sept. 14 7:00 p.m.
Sat Sept. 15 SOLD OUT
Sun Sept 16 5:00 p.m.
Fri Sept. 21 9:00 p.m.
Sat Sept. 22 7:00 p.m.
Sun Sept. 23 5:00 p.m.
2D only | Rated: PG-13 | Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes.
