Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

So here's the thing; Chris Nolan is a genius.  His treatment of Batman in Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and now The Dark Knight Rises is brilliant.  He delivers twists and turns, knows how to throw in social commentary and how to take you to the edge of despair and then yank you out with a lifeline of hope and triumph.  Good stuff to say the least. 

Christian Bale did another swell job playing a tortured Bruce Wayne and tired Batman, Michael Caine was great, again, as Alfred and Anne Hathaway made a  brilliant Catwoman.  Tom Hardy as Bane portrayed a brilliant, brutal bad boss, although my Canadian ears had a hard time deciphering that modulated and accented Bane dialogue at times.

Hans Zimmer's score, which he and James Newton Howard pioneered as a new sound for movies in Batman Begins is driving, familiar and fresh in many ways.  Zimmer knows how to take one note and somehow build a symphony of tension and triumph in your skin cells as you watch the movie.    

The way that Nolan and his team weave together this complex story with so many characters, threads from the first two films, and the comics make this movie one crazy quilt of complexity that almost demand a second viewing.

This film is intensely good and should be saluted in many ways.  I hope that it does well despite the dark cloud of the Aurora shootings.  Nolan understands humanity and takes the Batman movies into a tremendous mythology that is all their own.  It is nice to see that Nolan has beat the curse of the "third-movie-sucks" (as in Spider-Man 3, Superman III and Batman Forever).

I give The Dark Knight Rises a 9 out of 10.  

'Nuff Said.