Grade: 4.0
Ambitious, visually stunning, and structurally perfect – The Dark Knight Rises is another Nolan classic that has viewers do something Hollywood movies usually never do: think.
The Dark Knight Rises is the final movie in the Batman trilogy, with Bruce Wayne’s concluding battle as Gotham’s caped crusader. With seasoned actors such as Anne Hathaway (Catwoman), Gary Oldman (Commissioner Gordon), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (John Blake), Marion Cotillard (Miranda Tate), Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox), Michael Caine (Alfred), and, of course, Christian Bale as the Batman this generation has come to know, the movie promises to be more than just typical visual candy.
Filled with plot twists, pinches, and character timelines intertwining along the way, the 2 and a half-hour movie feels compact with all of the details that were necessary to make the story whole. Christopher Nolan concludes this trilogy not simply by selling the story, but actually giving a good one, hassle-free. Even for audiences who are not great fans of the Batman franchise, it is possible to understand the feelings of woe and despair as the credits roll up now that you know it’s over.
Bale’s rendition of the broken Dark Knight fills people with empathy and great anticipation, leaving you waiting for the world’s greatest detective to make one final stand and save Gotham City. Although the spotlight was more on Wayne rather than the Bat, the story set the stage for a deeper understanding on what true heroes and villains are made of. To show this point, Wayne’s screen time was parallel with Bane, Catwoman, and even butler Alfred.
The movie is poetic in a sense that it paints a thorough picture of the kind of society that people live in today. Not shadowing its predecessor, The Dark Knight (2008), The Dark Knight Rises gives the complete and respectable closure that signals not the end but the beginning of a new era in the world of super heroes.
Some men just want to watch the world burn and from Gotham City’s ashes – the Dark Knight shone through the flames, and, like the proverbial phoenix, rise he did.
