Eight years have passed and Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is a Howard Hughes recluse, broken in mind and body. He has aged badly. He wanders around his bare mansion hunched over a cane in his bathrobe. He has a distracting pimple near his eye. Gotham City is in a renaissance and does not need a Batman due to the no-nonsense Dent Law. Former Gotham City D.A. Harvey Dent has become a symbol of heroism for sacrificing his life for justice. Police commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) goes with this fantasy and lets the blame fall on phantom Dent-
By the way, this Dent Law may be illegal, unlawful, or downright fascist.
Rising from the city’s sewers is Bane (Tom Hardy), a brutal, nihilist leader who makes Saddam Hussein’s sons look like crybabies. Bane laughs at Vlad the Impaler.
Bane was raised in Hell’s Level 8 – the Malebolge.
Bane is hidden by a huge mechanical mask and apparently does not eat and ingests life-sustaining nutri
Wayne goes dead broke and he doesn’t care. He is lured back to
Wealthy philanthropist Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) offers to run Wayne Enterprises on Bruce’s behalf. Meanwhile, traffic cop John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) becomes Gordon’s foot soldier and Wayne Enterprises CEO Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) keeps making Bat toys. Just in case. Fox has kept busy making a Batman airborne drone-like vehicle and a clunky
Paraphrasing the great Frank T.J. Mackey: Respect the toys!
It is hard to see Tom Hardy beneath the mask. Was it really him? I glimpsed him a few times when in close-up. Did Hardy really add 30 pounds of muscle for the role in 4 months leading up to production? Did Nolan use CGI? Let’s recall the work done on Mickey Rourke in Robert Rodriguez’s SIN CITY. There’s a fanboy rumor that Christopher Nolan admitted that there
If that is genuinely 5’9” Hardy in every Bane scene, it is a remarkable performance. With his face hidden, he uses his body to convey dialogue and emotion.
Is it heresy to say Tom Hardy’s Bane is the best Batman villain with a truly engrossing backstory and a fanaticism that has historically given rise to
Bane does not get by without his own tearful, misty, red-eyed moment.
With both Batman and Bane wearing face-hiding masks, dialogue is important. But Hans Zimmer’s inner ear busting music makes that impossible. Isn’t Zimmer famous enough without making the music the prominent star? His music is a bully trying to upstage everything.
Yes, Christian Bale is through with Batman and you can see it. Nolan wisely gives Bale plenty of time as Bruce. Batman shows up a few times.
Batman has his own tearful, misty, red-eyed moment.
Thinking about this, I watched Cotillard from another angle. She has a cruel aura that naturally seeps out of her. There is something off-putting about Marion Cotillard and Nolan recognizes this and has put it to go use in INCEPTION and now DARK KNIGHT.
Hathaway, not yet Catwoman (thank God!), effectively conveys a bitterness. She stays true to her character. Don’t you hate it when a mean character finds salvation and then volunteers in a soup kitchen?
Finally, the script by Nolan and his brother Jonathan (from a story by the director and
There is an apocalyptic, lets-get-going-while-the-goings-good” ending as Nolan wisely will overshadow any re-imagining coming in the next few years.
See it in IMAX.
Victoria Alexander is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association: www.bfca.org/ and the Las Vegas Film Critics Society: www.lvfcs.org/. Victoria’s weekly column, “The Devil’s Hammer,” is posted every Monday. http://www.fromthebalcony.com/editorials.php.
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