REVIEW 146: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

Release date in India:	July 20, 2012
Director:	Christopher Nolan
Cast: Language:	Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Matthew Modine, Liam Neeson English

The Dark Knight Rises is grand in many places. But every 15 minutes or so, it switches from being grand to being a film trying to impress us with its grandeur ... That’s the over-riding feeling I came away with even after watching its interesting climax, ridden with several neat twists.

So it’s not that there is no enjoyment to be had in this film. There are some excellent action sequences here and there. The art director’s vision of Gotham City is gorgeously grim. And director Christopher Nolan has roped in some lovely actors for all the supporting roles. Leading the lot is a certain Ms Anne Hathaway. That Anne is stunning to look at and can act are already established facts. As Selina Kyle, the newly introduced character in this instalment of the Batman series, she also shows us that she fills out a catsuit impeccably and can throw some mean punches. In fact, there’s not enough where that came from. Selina’s character does not get sufficient screen time though frankly, she and Miranda Tate (played by Marion Cotillard) are far more exciting than Christian Bale’s dullard Bruce Wayne / Batman.

The Dark Knight Rises takes us to Gotham eight years after Batman disappeared. Bruce Wayne has retired into Wayne Manor, and Wayne Enterprises is in bad shape because the company abandoned a clean-energy project since it could have been misused by evil forces. Enter the malevolent terrorist Bane (Tom Hardy) who forces Wayne out of his reclusive existence. The ‘collateral damage’ caused by America’s war on terror, Guantanamo Bay, Occupy Wall Street … the many allusions to the American political, social and economic scenario are unmistakable.

Our protagonist here is an older Bruce Wayne, a man whose broken body does not lend itself to street battles the way it used to. There are few things more poignant than the discovery that our superheroes have feet of clay and limbs that age. This alone could have carried the film through. That it does not is a result of the combination of Christian Bale’s rather uninspiring turn as Wayne / Batman, Bane’s slightly muddled motivations plus the director and screenplay writers’ too obvious ambition to create an awe-inspiring film. And so, Gotham is a modern city but laboured efforts are made to lend a primitive feel to the goings-on. Why else, when an army of Gotham police clash with a mob of raging citizens, would just a couple of shots be fired right at the start after which all those armed men do not bother to use their weapons but instead opt for hand-to-hand combat? Is it because fisticuffs are more likely to stimulate our hormones? Well, the clash at that point between Wayne and Bane actually does provide quite an adrenaline rush … I can understand two men forcing each other to abandon their sophisticated weapons, but an entire crowd voluntarily seeming to do so just does not cut ice. Likewise, Bane’s back story feels too apparently designed to inspire wonderment, especially with its underground prison that’s not half as ominous as it’s aspiring to be.

So yes, the production values are top-notch, but the film lacks soul. Most of the cast are top-notch, but the leading man is not. Nolan’s The Dark Knight was beset with the very problems that plague The Dark Knight Rises, but it was made memorable by Heath Ledger’s hair-raisingly, heart-stoppingly, breathtakingly beautiful performance as the Joker. Perhaps if Team Hathaway & Cotillard had been allowed to dominate this film in a similar fashion, The Dark Knight Rises would have been a different story. As things stand, what we get is Tom Hardy working really hard to be a menacing Bane but weighed down by a leather face mask and the film’s all-consuming ambitions.

I genuinely liked Christian Bale in 2010’s The Fighter as the cocaine-addicted former boxing champ, but he does not yet possess the charisma to hold together a film like The Dark Knight Rises with its pretensions to being an epic. As for Nolan, he seems burdened by his own reputation. Wish he had made this a small film with a large heart. What it is instead is a big big film with little by way of passion. Except for intermittent scenes of action that enliven the proceedings (in particular, the escapes from that underground prison) and a delicious ending, The Dark Knight Rises is, for the most part, a lacklustre film.

Rating (out of five): **3/4

Release date in the US:	July 20, 2012
MPAA Rating (US):	PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action, sensuality and language)
CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	165 minutes
Language:	English

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Knight_Rises