The Dark Knight Rises

July 20, 2012

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And so, the final chapter of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy has landed. Don’t be alarmed if the ground isn’t shaking beneath your feet. Closing out what started with “Batman Begins” and peaked with “The Dark Knight,” “The Dark Knight Rises” may be the ending of the super-est superhero saga, but it’s not quite the whopping event film so many were hoping for.

Nolan, a master of grand spectacle with a mind for broody themes, keeps his ambitions high in both scale and resonance, delivering a nearly three-hour epic that speaks directly to our own unbalanced culture and economy. But whereas “The Dark Knight” invited dissertations on its more subtle Gotham-City-as-our-corrupt-world conceit, its follow-up is a continuous on-the-nose affair. The only things missing are the “POW!” effects bubbles.

The story picks up eight years after the events of the previous film, with Gotham prospering in the wake of Batman (Christian Bale) taking the fall for the crimes of Harvey Dent, who’s been hoisted up as a false idol for people in need of hope. Enter Bane (Tom Hardy), a burly villain whose shadowy associations bookend the trilogy, and whose anarchic plans turn the city’s working class into its own Occupy movement. Caught between revolutionaries and the moral upright is slinky Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman (Anne Hathaway), a jewel thief with a conscience to match her sticky fingers.

Though blessed with Nolan’s knack for widescreen urban awe (he’s fast becoming the Terrence Malick of metal and glass), “The Dark Knight Rises” unfolds with a rather workaday spirit, and while it’s plenty dark, it’s lacking in gray area to keep the mind stewing. The fault lies in the script by Nolan and brother Jonathan, who struggle with the delicate balance of real-world weight and comic-book levity, adding one-liners and in-jokes that clash with what’s at stake.

The movie’s key triumph is its focus on frailty, as never before has a superhero been rendered with such aching humanity. Far from impervious, Batman is, after all, just a man, making his hard-won rise to gallantry all the more affecting.