Review: The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1345836/

The Dark Knight Rises is rated Worth It.

I love the smell of spoilers in the morning.

This movie was amazing. The movie starts off with the lastest Batman villan, Bane, kidnapping a scientist in a daring mid-air heist. Afterwords, we learn that Bruce Wayne has more-or-less retired from being Batman after the events of The Dark Knight, and that Batman had taken the fall for Harvey Dent's death. Bruce had become a recluse since then, and was partially crippled from the many injuries he had taken. This changes when Catwoman breaks into Bruce's house during a party, and steals his mother's pearl necklace - as well as his fingerprints. This kind of gets gets him into the swing of things, but not quite returning as Batman yet. That happens when Bane uses his fingerprints to help to help a corrupt businessman steal WayneCorp from him. Afterwords, to the surprise of nobody, Bane double-crosses the businessman, and uses his secret army that was underneath the city to take over the city. He also breaks Batman's back, and imprisons half-way him across the world. To make a long story short, Bruce escapes, and returns to Gotham, and Bane is defeated. I won't give away the end, since there is a plot twist that you can see coming if you know you Batman lore, and it would kind of ruin it if you know ahead of time.


This movie could have easily be a mindless action movie, and I would still would have given it a worth it. But that is not what this movie is about (or, in fact, this trilogy). This has excellent dialog, good acting (except for Christian Bale's Batman voice, of course) and even deals with a genuinely mature concepts - such as, is it right to blame an innocent man for a crime he did not commit, and hold up a villan as a hero if it allows you to clean up the corruption of your city? What does it take for someone to let go of a tragedy, and get on with their life? The way they handle these concepts is subtle (for an action movie) and they SHOW you how they handle them, rather then do a preachy speech (though they tend to use these to introduce the concepts. Fortunately, the excellent dialog keeps the speeches from being cheesy). They also keep their use of Batman (and Bale's Batman voice) to a minimum; make no mistake, this movie is mostly about Bane.

So over all, this movie is so very much Worth It.