Movie report: The Dark Knight Rises


Movie report: The Dark Knight Rises

I saw this movie at a drive-in, and I highly recommend this type of venue for watching superhero movies. The big screen, exposed to the night sky, with cars and kids and bottles of YooHoo: it’s just the right setting for this kind of adventure.

This is a solid, dark, and atmospheric movie, as if carved from one of the stones that make up Wayne Manor. Batman has been absent for about 8 years. There’s a good reason for this: Bruce Wayne, Batman’s alter ego, is so banged up, in pain and walking with a cane – not to mention the emotional scars we can’t see – that he can’t even leave the house, and lives as a recluse, the subject of Howard Hughes-type rumors. Most of Wayne Manor is draped with furniture sheets, lying unused except for occasional society galas for charitable causes.

Selina Kyle shows up at one of these, not to socialize, but to burglarize. She’s an enterprising and spunky young woman who steals things for clients, and escapes her crime scenes in distinctly Batman-like fashion, like dropping from windows. She and Bruce Wayne seem made for each other, and they do meet, but she has a definitely anti-1% attitude toward the billionaire.

Commissioner Gordon is still hiding the secret of Harvey Dent’s crimes, maintaining the fiction that blames Batman. Alfred is great, as usual, one of the few people who cares about Bruce Wayne as a person.

Into Gotham City swaggers the aggressively criminal Bane. I have no idea what he’s trying to accomplish. He definitely stages some interesting scenes of mayhem, but his goals or motivations remained unclear to me throughout. Not like the Joker, who might have been insane, but you always knew what he was doing. It doesn’t help that Bane wears a breather of some kind that obscures his face and muffles his voice.

The actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Tommy from “3rd Rock” all growed up) is terrific as a smart cop trying to figure things out, from both the good guy and the bad guy ends. He is a pleasure to watch, as he was in Inception.

There’s also a woman semi-interested in Bruce Wayne and a couple of bad guys whose connection to Bane I couldn’t really figure out. And Morgan Freeman is wasted as Lucius Fox.

The main problem with this movie is it’s too long. Too much time with Gotham City under siege. Too many scenes of a truck prowling the streets with a nuclear weapon on board. Too many views of a dungeon-like prison that Bane was born in and that Bruce Wayne must escape. Too much, too many, too long.

Catwoman is terrific, a lot of fun. She shakes things up when she’s onscreen. Her agenda is diagonal to Batman’s, but it intersects in interesting ways. More of this!

The last 5 minutes of the movie have about 20 holy-crap moments, each of which is a spoiler in itself. For a movie billed as the end of this run of Batman, it’s clear that events could easily springboard into new and interesting directions.

There are awesome gadgets, spectacular chases, and great fight scenes. But it’s too long.

Recommended, but don’t be afraid to get up to buy popcorn after Bane takes over Gotham.

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