The Dark Knight Rises

In a year of superhero movies, it is definitely the job a director to make their movie stand out against the others that are playing, or have played earlier in the year. Christopher Nolan took on this task by releasing the conclusion to his dark trilogy of Batman flicks this summer, and I am satisfied to say he delivered, for the most part. The Dark Knight Rises is easily the best film out of the three, it's main problem is it takes entirely too long to get it to that point. At a run-time of almost 3 hours, you go into the film expecting to see quite a bit of Batman-style action, all while developing an enticing story- something that Nolan has excelled at in his previous two Batman endeavors. However, the film makes the 2 hours and 45 minutes you're watching the film feel like you've sat there for nearly four hours. The actual character of Batman appears in the movie for maybe a total of 45 minutes of the total run-time, which makes for an uninteresting amount of Bruce Wayne being a broken down man. The story takes place eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, and Wayne has taken to being a hermit who no one has seen in the entire eight years. Batman has also gone missing and people are starting to take notice of the coincidence between the two (well, except Commissioner Gordon that is). Wayne receives a visit from CatWoman (played rather fantastically by Anne Hathaway I might add) who convinces the bat to don his cape again and beat the baddies...the only problem? Bane. He puts a stop to Batman and takes over Gotham while Wayne sits in a cell and watches....for another hour and a half. During that time the story weaves and develops into a fairly generic "let's take over the city" story line, but then Wayne decides he needs to take down Bane and attempts to escape his mental and physical prison. That's when things get interesting. The story evolves past that of a superhero movie and onto some damn fine storytelling. As I mentioned earlier, it is easily the best of the three Nolan Batman films...but it takes over half the movie to get to the point. The movie could have easily been cut down some and still had the same impact near the ending- which is one of the best endings to a trilogy I've seen- if not ever than certainly in a long, long time. If you had told me going into the film that I'd tear up at a Batman movie I'd call you crazy (thanks, Michael Cane). Overall, if you're a fan of the caped crusader and/or Christopher Nolan I highly recommend you check this one out- it is well worth the wait to get to the good parts of the film when everything comes together. 4 out of 5.