It was a bit eerie seeing 'The Dark Knight Rises' within hours of dreadful events at a screening in Denver, Colorado. Thankfully nothing of that kind occurred here.
The Batman narratives pit good against evil and that is the unsurprising theme in this film. Evil heavily outnumbers good with villains, real, imagined and camouflaged at every turn. Principal amongst them is an almost unrecognisable Tom Hardy trussed up like Hannibal Lectar and possessing a prostethic Darth Vader voice. Anne Hathaway reinvents the Cat Woman and confirms her versatility in all manner of genres. Amongst a host of sub villains is Australia's Ben Mendelsohn chewing up the scenery in the first half.
At two and three quarter hours 'The Dark Knight Rises' is overlong in my opinion. Much of the language is quasi philosophical, quasi religious which I found irritatingly pompous and worse it muddied the specifics of many scenes. It dawned on me during the film that the plot is a take on Charles Dicken's 'A Tale of Two Cities' and indeed the book's famous line
"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
is spoken near the end of the film.
The previous Batman films have presented a Gotham City that is generically urban and dangerous but nondescript. This film makes no secret that Gotham City is modelled on New York City so the later scenes of dusty streets with law enforcement reclaiming control from terrorists is unmistakably symbolic of the post 9/11 events.
Technically impressive but 'less' of almost everything would have been 'more' for me.
✩✩
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