2 stars (out of four)
Eight years have passed in Gotham City since the events of The
Dark Knight, when the Joker plagued the
city, turned Harvey Dent into Two-Face and raked in hundreds of millions of
dollars at the box office. Gotham is a safer place now: the streets have been
rid of organized crime and there is no need for the Batman, that masked
vigilante the police mistakenly accused of murdering Harvey Dent.
On the streets, however, there is still belief in the Bat.
The streets of Gotham also, for the first time in the series, actually feel
part of a real city, one with food vendors and school playgrounds, suited
investment bankers and cabbies. And director Christopher Nolan populates his
city with some intriguing, well-developed characters.
Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is back, a tired man who’s
probably getting too old for this sort of thing but just believes in it too
much to quit. Gotham is in “peace time,” as one officer puts it, but Gordon has
seen it at war and remains wary. It is his diehard commitment to justice that
caused his wife to take off with the kids, leaving him alone to defend a city
that does not currently need him but could at any moment.
Perhaps he is not alone though. John Blake (Joseph
Gordon-Levitt), a young and ambitious officer, appears to be on hand to pick up
the Commissioner’s torch of idealism. As an orphan, Blake looked up to Bruce
Wayne, the parentless billionaire, but even more so, he idolized Batman. He has
since lost faith in Wayne but still believes in Batman.
Speaking of Batman, where is he? He mysteriously vanished
from Gotham following Dent’s death, we are told. (He also mysteriously vanishes
for sizable chunks of this movie.) The man behind the suit, Bruce Wayne
(Christian Bale), is still alive, living in self-imposed exile in Wayne Manor.
Tending to him as always is the Wayne family butler, Michael Caine. Er, I mean,
Alfred.
There is also Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), a leather-clad
femme fatale with hair so silky smooth you’d think she was strutting through a
Pantene commercial. Selina is a cat burglar. She robs jewelry off the wealthy
and while the movie is sneaky in the way it avoids flat-out calling her
Catwoman, we know better by that sly, twinkling Hans Zimmer theme that accompanies her on the score in several scenes.
Coy though the movie is about her, she is one of the best
parts of it. Ms. Hathaway is a nimble actress, both physically in combat scenes
but even more so when playing the role of seductress, and she is a lot of fun
to watch. She is the only glimmer of the wisecracking playfulness that was once
(long ago) a hallmark of the superhero genre.
The rest of that freewheeling fun is buried deep under a
heap of rubble by Bane (Tom Hardy), the joyless antagonist of The Dark
Knight Rises. Bane is a terrorist who was
excommunicated from the League of Shadows, that nefarious organization Batman
worked so hard to defeat in Batman Begins. Bane, like Batman, wears a mask, except his only covers his mouth and
distorts his British accent into a hissing Darth Vader-esque growl. This makes
for an intimidating presence but also obscures roughly half the actor’s lines
so that he sounds as though he is talking through a washing machine.
Bane seeks to burn Gotham to the ground and punish its
citizens for their decadence. In turn, Christopher Nolan punishes us with an
overlong and supremely decadent second half, which disappointingly goes on
autopilot. The Dark Knight Rises is
undoubtedly Mr. Nolan’s sloppiest script (he co-wrote it with his brother,
Jonathan Nolan, from a story by David S. Goyer). It labors early on with
expository backstory and neglects to surprise in its final act. The absence of
surprise is the most lamentable aspect of this cheerless movie. Mr. Nolan is
usually so good at keeping us on our toes; here he bores us by plodding through
every plot point his characters have promised us will happen.
Much has been made of the dark tone Christopher Nolan adopts
in his Batman films. That somber mood does play a crucial role in the success
of the first two movies but even more important is the grandeur Mr. Nolan lends
them. He treats these comic book stories as though they are classical myths.
But there is a fine line between grandeur and
pretentiousness and The Dark Knight Rises
hurtles right over it. Aside from Gordon and Blake (Gary Oldman and Joseph
Gordon-Levitt are Mr. Nolan’s two most valuable and underused assets), the
movie is dominated not by people but by symbolic avatars used to bludgeon us
over the head with the film’s thematic intent. Bane stands for anarchy. Batman
stands for some vague notion of justice.
What made 2008’s The Dark Knight so much fun was its identity as a thrilling comic
book movie elevated to the level of a crime epic. The Dark Knight
Rises is all elevation and no
entertainment. During that dreary slog of a second half, Christopher Nolan
wants us to sit and be impressed by his movie, to be overcome with awe. I sat.
I was impressed. Awe? Eh.
- Steve Avigliano, 7/20/12
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