Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

It's finally come to an end, Christopher Nolan put the final touches on the legend of the Dark Knight and boy did he do an excellent job of it. I'm going to assume anyone reading this is already in the loop as to what DKR is about so I'm just going to jump into the review.

CAST
DKR has a pretty well known cast going for it, at least if you're a fan of Nolan's work. Yup, you've seen most of them before and because they all did a great job I'm only going to concentrate on 4, the noobs: Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Hardy. Marion Cotillard is that beutiful number you may remember as Leo's wife from Inception, in DKR she plays a woman with some power or at least some money, or both and I accepted her character every second she was on screen. Not only is she breathtaking she's also a good actress. She starts out as what feels like a throwaway character and builds from there, all the while doing it with grace. How about that handsome mofo Joseph Gordon-Levitt, do I really need to say more? He's JG-L, you either like him or you like him, in this film, I liked him. He played an excellent beat cop and a believably upstanding member of Gotham (we all know those are few and far between.) He ends up playing one of the more interesting roles in the film and I think a lot of that comes from his acting. He seems the most human of all the characters, he's the one guy the audience will definitely identify with, at least as far as his actions are concerned. Then we come to Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, now she knows how to strut her stuff pretty well in the film but her character didn't seem all too fleshed out. For what she was given however, Hathaway did a fair job with it. All of this coming from a guy who was never really an Anne Hathaway fan, I always thought she was just average, now I know she's a little bit above that. Did I want to know more (but not in the "she's a mysterious character" sort of way), sure, but I'm okay with what I got.

BANE!!!
Now we come to the main man (besides the Bat) Bane! I feel I need a different paragraph just for him. Tom Hardy's Bane is easily my favorite villain of the trilogy. Yes, the Joker was the coolest, but Bane was the most dramatic, the most personal. I feel like I'll be crucified for saying I liked Bane more than the Joker, but let me explain myself. I liked Bane for different reasons than the Joker. Ledger was given a character with no real development other than he's a crazy clown and turned in an awesome performance. Hardy was given a character with more depth to him and brought him to life. Again, Ledger had one hell of a performance, but Hardy is arguably at least as good for his character and I just happen to like Bane more. The performance certainly wasn't Bronson either (for any movie buffs reading this), but it wasn't supposed to be, and I still think Hardy did an excellent job in this role as well as Bronson. A lot of the personalization of the character comes from the writing, sure, but acting, it's all in Hardy's eyes. It kind of has to be (what with the mask and all.) There's more to Bane than just the crazy megalomania and you can see that in his eyes, or really, behind his eyes, somewhere inside him. Yes there's a person behind that mask and he feels just like the rest of us. Also, don't worry about his voice too much, they managed to clear it up a lot, just keep your ears open during his scenes.

SCORE
Speaking of keeping your ears open, let's talk about the score of the film. Hans Zimmer dishes out another amazing score. My favorite thing about his scoring of both this film and Dark Knight is what he did with the villains. Everytime I think of the Joker I hear that weird white noise and everytime I think of Bane from hear on out I'll hear the chant (I'm sure you've heard it already.) A good composer can define the sound of a movie a great composer can define the sound of a legend and Zimmer most certainly does that. Another thing I like is when the villain's sound plays, it doesn't just play while we see the character, it plays before. Doing that gives things an ominous feeling, when you hear the chant or the white noise you know something is waiting around the corner about to ruin your day.

DIRECTING
What can I say about Christopher Nolan without sounding biased? He's my favorite director and still is, there's just something about his films that draws me in and I completely get lost in his world. DKR definitely feels like the 3rd film in a trilogy, so it's got that going for it. Only negative thing I can say is that the first half drags a little. Or maybe a lot, but it's all set-up anyways and it does have entertaining moments in it so it's not that big of a problem. Incidentally, once the film picks up good gawd in the heavens above does it pick up. Certainly picking up the slack of the first half and then some, so really, it more than evens things out. I should also note that the 2hr 45min runtime doesn't feel that long, at least it didn't to me.

So there you have it, my review of DKR, everything from cast to directing was put together so well it has easily become my favorite Batman film. Best final note I can give about this film is lose any assumptions. Don't assume Bane's going to sound like shit, don't assume low or high expectations, don't assume any rumors you may have heard about it are true or false. If you can go into it with a clear and open mind and view the film as it's own seperate entity that's part of a bigger picture you will be more than pleasantly surprised. Even if you do assume things you'll still come out of the theater feeling like you saw a good film, I give The Dark Knight Rises an A+!