The Dark Knight Rises

Audiences for Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy fall into roughly three camps.  There are the devoted/rabid fans, the casual fan that likes blockbusters that aren't always vapid, and those that just can't get past Christian Bale's "Batman Voice."  After seeing The Dark Knight Rises, I'm reasonably sure that this film won't be changing anyone's mind about the series as a whole.  But what about this last chapter, specifically?


The Dark Knight Rises picks up eight years after the end of The Dark Knight.  Does that mean you need to watch The Dark Knight to understand what's going on here?  Well, it doesn't hurt and it gives you an excuse to see Heath Ledger's Joker again, but it's not necessary; it does help the beginning make more sense, though.  Gotham City, once a hellhole of crime and corruption, has now become a safe city, thanks to legislation passed after TDK.  Batman, once a staple in the city's grimy streets, has not been seen since and remains a suspect in a murder he did not commit.  But, other than that, things are just fine.  Instead of spending his evenings with thugs trying to kill him, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has opted to go the Howard Hughes route, avoiding human contact in his mansion and feeling sorry for himself.

He'd put the suit on, but he doesn't want to devalue it by removing the original packaging

Meanwhile, a series of seemingly unconnected crimes and shady business activities prove to be the work of a single mastermind: Bane (Tom Hardy).  Bane claims to be the heir of Ra's Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) and the leader of the League of Shadows.  What does that mean to folks that haven't seen or don't remember Batman Begins?  Bane wants to destroy Gotham City and the dude has, like, ninjas on his side.  Or random street thugs.  Whatever.  Oh, and this time, it's personal --- Batman (more or less) killed Ra's, so Bane is gunning for the Bat.  But first, Bane wants Batman to suffer.  All the advantages Batman has had in the past --- his brains, his brawn, his skill, and his money --- are negated as Bane either removes them from the equation or one-ups Bats.  AND Bane holds the entire city hostage with a fusion bomb.

AND Bane insists on leading when they dance

Things look pretty bleak.  Then again, you have to fall before you can rise, I guess.

The recognizable cast in The Dark Knight Rises swells from past entries, but I generally liked the focus on the core plot and not the characters.  Once again, Christian Bale is Batman/Bruce Wayne.  I think Bale did another great job embodying the odd personality of Bruce Wayne; he conveys the mix of privilege and riches with determination and psychosis quite well.  I've never been crazy about his "Batman Voice," but I generally like his portrayal of the Bat.  Anne Hathaway has a sizable supporting role as Selina Kyle (NOT Catwoman) and she was far better than I had expected.  It's not that I doubted Hathaway's acting skills, but I didn't buy into her costume in the promotional footage.

As it turns out, I actually didn't mind the costume at all, in the context of the film, and I liked the quasi-femme fatale qualities of her character.  However, Batman is the greatest superhero because he has the greatest villains, and TDKR had a lot to live up to after Ledger's Oscar-winning performance in the last film.  I wouldn't say that Tom Hardy's Bane steps entirely out of that shadow, but he was pretty damn awesome.  The character design was very cool and Hardy managed to be both physically intimidating and a believable mastermind.  You can argue that Bane sounded like someone doing a Sean Connery impression through a broken vocoder --- and you would be correct --- but I enjoyed the dialogue I understood (roughly 60%) enough to not mind the bits I missed, kind of like my attitude toward Brad Pitt's accent in Snatch.

Sadly, Bane never says "Man talk, baby" in his Robo-Connery voice

Joseph Gordon-Levitt shows up to play a beat cop that sees value in the moral space between Batman and Commissioner Gordon.  Marion Cotillard also has a small, key part.  While neither of these actors stole their scenes, their parts were clearly there to fill thematic purposes, and they played them well.  As for how necessary their characters were...well, if you're going to include them and not make the story as a whole suffer, then this is the way to do it.  Gary Oldman returns as Commissioner Gordon and I thought this was his best work with the character yet.  Morgan Freeman also returned, although in a greatly diminished capacity.  Similarly, Michael Caine once again played Bruce Wayne's faithful butler, Alfred, but he isn't in very much of the film at all.  There are a few other noteworthy bit parts --- Matthew Modine is a useless cop, Liam Neeson briefly reprises Ra's Al Ghul, the guy whose face was digitally removed in The Social Network (Josh Pence) played a young Ra's, and Cillian Murphy returns because...well, just because.

However, the acting in a superhero movie is really secondary to the spectacle.  As much as I enjoyed Tom Hardy here --- and I did, quite a lot --- this is a Big Movie, made for IMAX, and it shows.  The largely practical effects in The Dark Knight Rises were excellent.  The opening scene with the plane being destroyed and the shots of the bridges being blown were my personal favorite visual moments (aside from Bane tossing aside the broken Batman mask), and that ignores the vastly improved Bat-cycle and Bat-plane scenes.

Where do you park that thing?

The action scenes are solid and large in scope, but this series has never been about intricate fight scenes as much as it has been about Batman being a scary bastard.  But with Bane outdoing Batman, does that really work this time?

"I'm not internationally know, but I'm known to rock the microphone"

Director Christopher Nolan did a great job bringing this trilogy to a close.  It ties in with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, but has an identity of its own.  The camerawork is good, the big scenes feel huuuge, and this epic sequel managed to hold onto that epic feeling throughout.  As a comic nerd, I appreciated the choices made with a lot of the characters and I was impressed with how many classic Batman ideas were included in this story without it feeling disjointed or suffering from the (lower case "b") bane of superhero sequels: too many villains.  More than anything else, Nolan crafted a tale that is as realistic as a Batman movie can be and actually concludes logical character arcs.  Is this as good as the excellent (but flawed) The Dark Knight?  Maybe not quite, but it's damn close.

Here's the biggest problem with the film, though: there isn't a lot of Batman in this Batman movie.  This is a great story about Bruce Wayne, the man inside the suit, but it is not the quintessential Batman movie.  That's fine by me and was obviously a conscious choice by the filmmakers, but it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.  Yes, Bruce Wayne overcomes personal and physical obstacles in his quest for victory, but there are not nearly as many moments here where the Batman seems truly bad-ass.  You can also make a valid argument that time was an enemy in this film, specifically its liberal use.  The time gap between TDK and TDKR is fine, for the most part, but it raises some interesting questions.  For starters, just how low was Alfred willing to see Wayne sink before telling him about that letter?  The best detective in the city, Gordon, never tried to identify Batman?  Even a rookie could (and did) figure that out --- just look for the guy who can afford all those wonderful toys.

"This Batmobile piece reads 'Property of Wayne Enterprises.'  Hmm..."

And the convenience of the fusion bomb's countdown nearly matching Wayne's recovery period was a bit much.  And how did a penniless Bruce Wayne get from Hell's Toilet, Middleeasternistan, to the US, much less inside the isolated Gotham?  And if removing his mask puts Bane in unbearable agony, how does he manage to maintain such a perfectly smooth shaved head?

A: he has a mohawk ponytail underneath the center strap

So, no, it's not perfect.  Hell, it's not even that fun to watch; it is 2:44 of gritty angst.  It is, however, a fantastic end to a trilogy.   It could have been better if we saw Batman outsmart Bane instead of just punching him in the face, but the scope was so epic that I didn't mind the second Death Star that Batman solved his problems by punching harder.  I will go so far as to say that The Dark Knight Rises is the single best movie to date that features Batman.  I may like The Dark Knight a little better, but the flaws are fewer and less important in this film.  This is also one of the few trilogy endings that actually delivered; I would put this above Return of the Jedi, but below Return of the King and Slap Shot 3: The Junior League. 

To put it another way, The Dark Knight Rises might not have a lot of Batman in it, but it gets to the core of what makes Batman great; Batman is the single greatest superhero for many reasons, but his legacy, influence, and punk rock DIY attitude toward justice shine through here.  In the hands of just about any other filmmakers, the last few scenes of this movie might have come across as a cheap teaser for the next sequel.  Instead, Nolan & Co. closed the Bruce Wayne chapter appropriately, even if the story still goes on.  This unexpectedly became less about Bruce Wayne as Batman and more about Batman as an abstract idea.  I wasn't expecting that, and I found that approach very satisfying from a film and comic nerd perspective.

And if you really just can't get past Bale's "Batman Voice," enjoy this clip from Attack of the Show.  I think it captures the ridiculousness of The Voice rather well.

Peacock

When I saw the cover to Peacock, I assumed that this was going to be some sort of drama between the three actors on the cover (Ellen Page, Susan Sarandon, and Cillian Murphy).  It sounds like a reasonable premise, especially with the tag line of "If only he knew what she was doing."  Since this was released direct-to-DVD, it hasn't gotten much buzz; in other words, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

The first scene shows a 1950s American housewife doing chores --- pinning up laundry in the back yard, cleaning, cooking, etc. --- and then going upstairs to her bedroom.  On the bed is a neatly folded pile of men's clothing.  She pauses for a moment, takes off her wig, and you realize that you've been watching Cillian Murphy dressed as a woman for the past couple of minutes.  Well, I figured it out a little ahead of time, but if you weren't familiar with Murphy, that scene would have been quite a shock.  Before I go on, I have to point out that this is not exactly a movie about cross-dressing.  I mention that because, more often than not, cross-dressing in movies and television is used for cheap laughs.

There's nothing wrong with that, but I just wanted to make it clear that this isn't cross-dressing for comedy.  Murphy's character is also not pulling a Buffalo Bill in this movie and using cross-dressing in a horror film context.  This is something different.

Every morning, John (Cillian Murphy) wakes up and dresses himself up as Emma.  Emma takes care of John, doing the housework, cooking, and leaving him notes and instructions on what to do while she's "sleeping."  When it is time, Emma goes upstairs, changes into John's clothes, and he seems delighted to find breakfast with a good luck note by his plate.  Obviously, John has some sort of dissociative identity disorder, because the two personalities seem oblivious to each other.  John goes about his day as a painfully shy and socially awkward bank worker, comes home, and repeats the routine again in the morning.  No one knows about Emma.

One morning, while putting up the laundry to dry, Emma is knocked unconscious when a train car is derailed and tears through the back yard.  The accident brings neighbors running, and they find a loose caboose in the yard with a woman that no one in the small town has ever met before.  Emma excuses herself as quickly as she can, goes inside and changes into John, but the damage is done.  The townsfolk want to see and speak with the woman who narrowly avoided a tragic death; Fanny (Susan Sarandon) wants to get Emma involved in the local women's shelter; the incumbent mayor (Keith Carradine) wants to hold a rally in their back yard and have pictures taken with both John and his lovely wife, Emma; Maggie (Ellen Page), a struggling young mother, is forced to ask John for financial aid, but is willing to accept Emma's care and advice.  From the moment that train jumps the rails, John's carefully designed insular life begins to unravel.

This is Cillian Murphy's movie from start to finish.  The supporting actors are good; there really isn't a bad performance in the bunch.  Susan Sarandon is fine as a do-gooding socialite, Ellen Page showed some depth in a tough role, and even the typically mediocre Bill Pullman was fine.  I was pleasantly surprised by Josh Lucas' understated performance as the closest thing John has to a friend, too.  The supporting cast is just window dressing on this movie, though.  This is all about Murphy's performance.  I was very impressed with the way he channeled two distinct characters; changing his voice and appearance are no-brainers, but Murphy was able to give each character its own physicality, and that is where his performance impresses the most.  He's certainly not a pretty woman, but I thought he was pretty convincing, and that is a huge step toward making this film work.

Still prettier than Fergie.

This is director and co-writer Michael Lander's first feature-length film, and it definitely shows off a particular strength.  While it certainly helps that a noteworthy cast (two cast members from Inception, for starters) signed on to a movie written and directed by an unproved talent, Lander obviously had pretty clear ideas about what he wanted to do with this film.  The set and the props in scenes were arranged with particular purposes in mind, and they all paid off.  Lander also did a good job with the cast, guiding them toward very sympathetic performances (except Pullman, who was supposed to be mean).

I was less impressed with Lander's story.  By showing that John and Emma were different personalities from the same mind within the first few minutes of the film, it eliminated the main surprise of this story.  From that point forward, the movie focuses on the battle between the personas to see which will emerge victorious; this is a very gradual process, but the slow pace might have worked if there was an appropriate climax.  There isn't.  Sure, we see how far the personalities are willing to go to defeat the other into submission, but it is nowhere near as disturbing as the movie is building it up to be.

This had a lot of promising elements that could have come together to make a rather disturbing psychological drama/horror flick.  Brian Reitzell's score did a great job conveying the conflict within John's body and was occasionally very creepy.  The performances were solid all around, with Cillian Murphy giving a particularly impressive performance.  Unfortunately, something is missing.  Maybe it is the lack of a satisfying conclusion.  Maybe it's the fact that none of these characters are particularly interesting (aside from a case of multiple personalities), or maybe it's because none of the townspeople immediately realize that Emma is a dude.  Everything in this movie is so serious, so sad, so...drab.  There is no joy in this film to balance that out, and the lack of a chilling or horrifying conclusion multiplies that drab feeling.  It's not a bad idea, and I feel bad that Murphy wasted a lot of good work here, but the movie doesn't live up to the sum of its parts.

As a quick final note, I know I criticize this movie for not being horrific enough, and some people might disagree with that statement.  SPOILER ALERT: I don't care if a drifter gets killed in this movie.  Drifters are just fodder for serial killers in movies, and you knew from the moment he appeared on screen that something bad would happen to him.  That's what he gets for talking to strangers.

Inception

Christopher Nolan obviously has a fascination with the notion of reality.  In Memento, he focused on how our memories shape us and how we shape our memories.  In The Prestige, he looked at the power of illusion.  Now, with Inception, Nolan ditches the pretenses and goes for broke; this film delves into the world of dreams.

In this story, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a corporate spy with a unique modus operandi: he enters dreams with his intended victims and steal their ideas right out of their minds, a process called extraction.  Inception is the flip side of that coin; instead of stealing an idea, you plant one.  Just as it is far easier to destroy than to create, it is far more difficult to perform inception than extraction.  Indeed, Cobb's partner, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and others insist that inception is absolutely impossible.  However, after botching a job, their intended victim, Saito (Ken Watanabe), makes them an offer they can't refuse.  If they successfully perform inception and convince his corporate rival's heir, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), to dismantle his father's massive corporation, Saito will pay everyone handsomely and give Cobb access to the only thing he truly wants --- his family.

There's more to it than that --- a lot more --- but I can't simplify it and still do the story justice.  I can, however, marvel at the unique story elements.  This is a very intelligent story that has been thought through from start to finish.  To pull off the inception, Cobb and his crew design several elaborate dreamscapes and they layer the dreams one inside of another inside of another.  So, they all go to sleep and go into the shared dreamscape, and then they go to sleep in that dream and then go to sleep in the next dream to reach that third layer.  Does that sound complicated?  Well, wait.  Each layer of dream has a different concept of time.  In the first layer, five minutes of real-world time equals an hour of dream time.  In the second layer, that becomes ten hours, in the third, a hundred.  What makes that notion interesting is the fact that the dreamers have some level of awareness with the level above them; like someone that has water dripping on them might dream of drowning, these characters are affected by what is happening around their sleeping bodies.  There is an extended sequence where a car is falling, for instance, and the next dream layer has everyone floating in mid-air because their bodies are all asleep in the falling car in the dream layer above.  What only takes a few seconds (a falling car) feels like several minutes to those dreamers.  That opens up a lot of layered storytelling possibilities and introduces some tricky timing, and Christopher Nolan did a great job making each layer work.

While this is more of a psychological thriller than anything else, Inception has its share of solid action sequences.  There is a surprising amount of gunfire in the movie and a lot of full-contact driving sequences.  These are nice, but that should come as no surprise from the director of The Dark Knight.  The movie's uniqueness is shown primarily in a great scene where Joseph Gordon-Levitt fights in a hallway with no consistent gravity.  It's not a particularly flashy scene, and Gordon-Levitt doesn't come across as ridiculously bad-ass or anything, but it's a wonderful illustration of the possibilities available in the dream worlds.

Something that surprised me about this film was the emotional content.  Clever ideas and good action are nothing particularly new to Nolan because his movies are all about the plot.  Honestly, I don't think I've seen an incredible acting performance in his movies, aside from the notable exception of Heath Ledger.  That diligence to the story usually sacrifices any true emotional attachment.  Here, though, we are given two distinct and satisfying stories with heart.  On the one hand, we have Robert Fischer, who felt like a disappointment to his empire-building father (Pete Postlethwaite).  By the film's end, though, there is a genuine moment between the two; the fact that the moment was completely engineered by Cobb and his crew doesn't negate the scene's emotion.  On the other hand, we have Cobb.  He has been dealing with intense loss and guilt for a while, to a degree that is affecting (and infecting) his work.  When he finally confronts the manifestation of his guilt, there are a few minutes that acknowledge the importance and limitations of dreams, and these moments are the core of the story.  If that scene had felt forced or flat, the whole movie would have seemed like a clever piece of filmmaking, but not an important work.  And this is undoubtedly an important film.

What is odd in a movie filled with oddness is the absence of any truly charismatic character.  Leonardo DiCaprio does a very good job as Cobb, willing to risk his sanity and that of his friends just to see his family again.  The character is smart, but flawed, and DiCaprio (who I think is a good actor that is smart enough to work with great directors) gives his best performance in recent memory.  He is the heart and brains of the story and he deserves recognition for how well he carried this film.  Of course, his performance would have been wasted without someone of equal talent in his scenes.  Marion Cotillard turns in a varied and emotional performance, alternately cooing with love or screaming with hate.  DiCaprio's performance required someone to react to him, and Cotillard played her part well.  Her performance is somewhat hampered by the limitations placed on her character, but she still was able to convey a lot of emotion.

The rest of the cast is good, but their characters are not as integral to the plot as DiCaprio's or Cotillard's.  Cillian Murphy has the next most emotionally complicated role, and he does it well.  Resentment is often a trait that makes characters unsympathetic, but he is able to show that emotion and still come across as someone in need.  Ellen Page acts as the story's point-of-view character, the character least familiar with the dreamscape.  Her scenes are primarily used to show off the possibilities of dreams, and her character acts as Cobb's conscience.  It's not a terribly complex role for Page, but her character still seems well developed.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt turns in another subtle performance as the matter-of-fact member of Cobb's team, but he shows personality in a few brief scenes that help change him from just another character into someone you're rooting for.  Tom Hardy is appealing as the rogue of the group as well.  The rest of the cast has more limited roles, either because of screen time, or because of their character's role.  Still, Michael Caine, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Tom Berenger and Lukas Haas all add something to their roles that make them feel more substantial than they are.

This film was written and directed by Christopher Nolan.  I've already mentioned how clever the story is, but it's worth mentioning again.  This is a smart screenplay that has heart and some humor.  Most importantly, though, this is a unique story.  You can argue that it shares some similarities with Dark City or The Matrix because it plays with the notion of reality, but Inception is a lot deeper than that and is better in almost every way than any movie with a similar conceit.  The acting is full of competent performances, but it is noteworthy that this is the first time Nolan has been able to capture this much honest emotion on film.  The cinematography is good for the most part, with a few truly exceptional scenes that show the potential of the plot.  I think this is Nolan's best work to date.

The one thing it lacks is an extraordinary character.  I find it odd that a movie with so many bigger-than-life moments has characters that are all essentially normal.  Well, except for the entering people's dreams thing.  I can see the importance of having DiCaprio, Cotillard, and Page as regular folks, but I think an opportunity was missed by having Hardy do the same.  Hardy was somewhat sarcastic, but I think his character would have been a little more appealing if he had been a little more of...I don't know...maybe a lovable bastard; he was only a few steps away from the guy you like to hang out with, but wouldn't trust alone with your sister, but those few steps can make a big difference for supporting characters.

That is just me nit-picking, though.  This is a visually interesting, intellectually fascinating movie with good direction and acting.  It has a good ending, too, but it's better seen than read.  I expected to enjoy this movie because I like so many of the people involved, but this turned out to be the best new release I have seen in a few years.