The Dark Knight Rises

Dark and thrilling, the final instalment of Christopher Nolan's trilogy delivers a most outstanding and epic conclusion.

Set eight years on from the last film, The Dark Knight Rises follows Bruce Wayne, billionaire and cloaked hero, as he struggles to move on from the harrowing events of The Dark Knight.  Bruce's life as a recluse within his grand mansion is portrayed as meaningless; dust sheets pulled over the furniture in vast, almost empty rooms.  As he slowly loses grasp on the city of Gotham, our hero is faced with a crisis of identity.  Haunted by his past that he cannot move on from, but unable to embrace the masked man that he once was, Bruce Wayne is a man without an identity.  This is constructed through the symbol of the anonymous mask, which the script returns to explore several times, challenging whether the Batman was the hero of the people or a symbol of the everyman himself.  The film's marxist themes were furthermore an unexpected and interesting spin to the storyline, as Gotham is confronted with the perils of revolution and terrorism.

There were several truly excellent additions to the cast, with a significant portion of the cast of Inception reuniting under Nolan's incredible direction.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt shone as Blake, the hard-working, heroic cop who never loses faith in the Batman nor sight of his own difficult past.  But by far my favourite character had to Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle!  Stiletto heels, red lipstick and pearl necklaces, Selina is the definition of style, seduction and deadliness.  The cat burglar, whose intentions are often unpredictable, is the woman that men dream of and women dream of being.  Strong and independent, Nolan successfully delivers a confident female lead who is never once lost amidst the equally strong male characters of the plot.

While Tom Hardy gave a confident and effective performance as the plot's villain, a sinister force not to be reckoned with, he is notably restricted by the mask that consumes his face and distorts his voice.  The absence of Heath Ledger's ever charismatic Joker was therefore hard to miss.  However, where the film perhaps most fell down, at least initially, was within the bleak and ever so slightly depressing tones that surround the film's portrait of Bruce Wayne for the first half or so of the film.  While the storyline of a man unable to move on in a world that has was interesting, it was explored for far too long and made the plot feel slow and wary at times.

It was therefore the truly excellent twists at the end which really led me to be suddenly and completely hooked to every moment of the film's exciting, grand finale.  Two dimensional characters suddenly become rich with deep, intriguing histories and their motives were challenged and rewritten.  Set to the ever-incredible work of Hans Zimmer, the soundtrack perfectly captured the final film's dark and epic tone.  The Inception-esque ending is far from simple, and Nolan will leave you wondering whether it is indeed intended to be literal or metaphorical.

Christopher Nolan's filmmaking has redefined the superhero genre, making it dark, seductive and of an outstandingly high-quality.  It will be both hard and interesting to see how others attempt to follow....