It’s no secret America loves to watch a hero fall only to rise up again like the proverbial phoenix and surpass the overwhelming odds stacked against them.  It’s also no secret that with a title like The Dark Knight Rises, it can be expected that such a thing will happen.  From the outset we see the effects of Batman’s sacrifice at the end of The Dark Knight.  Eight years have passed since the Dent Act was put in place and Gotham is virtually a crime free city.  Batman is all but forgotten and Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale – The Machinist, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight) has become a crippled recluse, leaving the Playboy lifestyle of his younger days behind.

He is, however, introduced to Selina Kyle, or Catwoman (Anne Hathaway – Love and Other Drugs, The Devil Wears Prada), as she makes off with some pearls from his safe. Hathaway, incidentally, is one sexy Catwoman – much more so than Berry’s portrayal, in this reviewer’s humble opinion. Shortly thereafter, this film’s villain, Bane, and his past with The League of Shadows are pointed out to Bruce and he starts to get back in the game – he can’t let his beloved city fall to this punk.  Finally, he decides it’s time to put the suit back on.  By this time, everyone knows that Bane is planning something destructive for the newly reformed Gotham, but what is anyone’s guess.

When beloved butler Alfred (Michael Caine – The Prestige, Children of Men) warns Wayne not to don the cowl and go looking for Bane, the result is as expected.  See what happens you don’t listen to your elders?  The beat down that follows shares similarities to the awesome fight between Vin Diesel and Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson in Fast Five.  Batman and Bane hammer each other with heavy hits while keeping the audience guessing how much punishment the Bat can take.  Much like the Knightfall story arc this film borrows from, it ends just as brutally.

Having seen Christopher Nolan’s previous film Inception, it’s clear he wanted his supporting team back together on this one.  He brings back to the silver screen Tom Hardy (Inception, RocknRolla) as Bane and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (500 Days of Summer, 50/50, Inception) as John Blake, and it’s obvious Nolan wanted to give these two heavy screen time.  Gordon-Levitt hogs much of the screen for the first hour and an half of the film and I can’t complain. Gordon-Levitt was loved in 3^rd Rock from the Sun years ago and he has rapidly become one of America’s favorite big screen stars as of late – he can’t go wrong!  As far as Bane goes…I wanted to be as horrified by him as I was by the Joker and in some ways I was.  He is definitely a scary guy and probably more of a match for Batman physically than any other villain as of yet in the films, but it was hard not envisioning Darryl Hammond’s Saturday Night Live Sean Connery almost every time he spoke. There were also a few occasions where I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but then he would shoot someone and I caught on pretty quickly.

The city destruction Bane causes halfway through the film appears to have borrowed from the Cataclysm story arc but with a series of well-placed bombs replacing the earthquake.  Watching the bridges fall provided a shocking prelude to how desperate the situation was that Batman now had to face.  Bane as the ruthless villain was icing on the cake.  I mentioned above that his voice made it a little harder for me to hate/fear him the way I did with Joker in the previous film, but seeing his complete disregard for human life did have me questioning whether the Joker was really Batman’s greatest foe.  The scene at the stadium is a chilling reminder of this.

Fans expecting to see a roller coaster of action this time around will be disappointed.  Rises starts like a tiny match and builds very slowly for the first half of the film and then it’s a sudden massive blaze for the rest of its near three hour run time. Wayne doesn’t even put the suit on until every supporting character has their time in the limelight.

Still, Nolan has done a fantastic job of bringing his vision of the Batman universe to a close (at least for now) and manages to slip a little taste of things to come toward the end, as well as a couple of fantastic twists.  Let’s hope he hasn’t truly decided to move on and leave the franchise with someone else.

ComicsOnline gives The Dark Knight Rises 4 out of 5 crazy prison escapees.

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