Directed by Christopher Nolan
Written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan
Starring Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
If you asked me, I'd tell you that The Dark Knight (2008) is one of the greatest movies ever made, so naturally the follow-up had a lot to live up to. The hugely anticipated sequel, four years in the making, is finally here and I'm sure all Bat-fans are eagerly waiting to see if Chris Nolan can deliver the goods once more. Before seeing The Dark Knight Rises I was optimistic because looking at Nolan's previous record he's never really made a bad film, so I didn't expect him to start now.
The movie starts eight years after the events of the Dark Knight; Batman hasn't been spotted since and Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has become a recluse. Enter Bane, a masked madman played to perfection by Tom Hardy, a man hell-bent on destroying the city of Gotham, to set the wheels in motion. With Bruce Wayne getting older we see him increasingly relying on a whole network of allies including Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), Detective Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway).Unfortunately, his age gets the better of him, a good angle for the final film in the series, as Bruce Wayne's struggle is physical as well as mental, evidenced by the cane he uses; he must now think about the future of Gotham and Batman's place within it.
Much like Inception (2010), Nolan has a lot of characters to handle and yet again he does this with skill. Every single important character has their moment and final pay-off is rewarding for the audience, as I'm sure the box office returns will be for Warner Bros. With a running time of 165 minutes, it's larger in scale than anything he's done before but it seems like this is no object; from film to film Nolan has shown he has an eye for spectacular and there are sequences in The Dark Knight Rises that leave you in awe.
The fact that The Dark Knight Rises falls just short of the quality of The Dark Knight means nothing, considering it is not easy to duplicate perfection; it's a more than accomplished conclusion to the legend that still manages to be a cut above the rest. Forget The Avengers: this is a comic-book film with a perfect balance of the emotional and the extravagant. When I think of cinema's great trilogies, I think of the original Star Wars trilogy, Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, The Godfather; now I'm pleased to add Christopher Nolan's Batman to that group. The word 'flop' is not Nolan's vocabulary.
Verdict - Chris Nolan, in his might, has delivered an outstanding ending to the Dark Knight story. See it. - 9.5/10
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