Cinematic Releases: The Dark Knight Rises Review #2
I love Christian Bale. I love Tom Hardy. I love Gary Oldman. I love Joseph Gordon-Levitt. These are four of my all time top actors. Tippy top. Not just "I like them." I consider them exemplary and of the finest caliber. These four alone are not all of the exceptional actors in the franchise, of course. Aaron Echkart. Michael Caine. Morgan Freeman. Cillian Murphy. Liam Neeson. And the once amazing Heath Ledger. I love every one of these actors. I don't think a single person would argue with you that any of these actors are less than great.
And, most importantly, I love Batman.
The Batman universe is one of the best ever created in comics -- and Batman one of the best characters ever imagined. I even respect the real world perspective of Nolan's films. I respect his angle, but deplore his execution.
I pride myself on my objectivity. I pride myself on being as fair minded as I possibly can. I can't stand film critics. You hear that!? I can't stand them. Small issues, I can ignore. A stupid scene or two? I can ignore that. A character or actor I don't like? I can ignore them. Stylistic choices I don't agree with? I can ignore those. A weak action sequence? I can ignore that. I can even enjoy a dumb, check-your-brain-at-the-door film. I try to judge as objectively as possible in every facet of life, not just film critiquing.
But I am frustrated with you, America. Very frustrated. I am confounded here. I am downright awe struck at how anyone can come away from this movie and somehow miss how obscenely ridiculous it all is.
Not sure how they did it, but Christian Bale manages to sound even dumber than he ever did. It's almost like Christopher Nolan is trying his hardest to see how far he can push the silliness factor in a film that insists so diligently on its yearning to be taken seriously. Apparently, he can push it pretty fucking far according to the Rotten Tomatoes score...and practically every person on the planet.
Take the eye-rolling absurdity of every Batman line in Dark Knight and multiply that by what in the fuck?! Did everyone else fall asleep in the theater and dream a better movie than I did? What in the hell happened here? Are you people even alive?
I'll wrap up my thoughts on Batman by saying this:
"Where is the trigger!?" is the new "Where are they?!"
And I thought Bale was bad enough as Batman. Wait until you hear the Powerpuff Girl villain passing himself off as Bane! He sounds like a conniving evil-doer stripped from the pages of a dastardly mad scientist's take-over-the-world scheme.
He sounds. Absolutely. Fucking. Stupid.
It is an incredible testament to Tom Hardy's physical acting that he can manage to not look as ridiculous as he sounds. In fact, whenever he wasn't talking and just plain being intimidating or kicking ass or simply walking with that looming gait while he holds his vest, it was literally the only thing besides Levitt's John Blake that I found acceptable in this joke of a film.
The overall tone is insulting and manipulative with characters incessantly speaking in exhaustive unrealistically poetic monologues while Hans Zimmer's score, though beautiful on its own, almost ceaselessly begs you to feel for these contrived all-to-perfect conversations. For a film that persists so stridently on being based in reality, why does every fucking line feel so meticulously engineered to sound as cool or sad as possible? People don't talk like this. Who in the hell do you know that talks like these characters? Assholes talk like these characters. Assholes do.
A nice undercurrent of the most dull, serviceable shots and production design do their best to not get in the way of the melodramatic writing or display any sort of...has Christopher Nolan ever even heard of the fucking word "atmosphere?" Because there is none. I'm sure he didn't want anything distracting you from the ham handed bullshit he makes these actors say with the straightest faces possible. Great actors that's for sure.
And hoo boy is it boring as hell! Wow, almost nothing of consequence happens for nearly a good hour. I actually had hope for the film at this point because it started to up the ante a little bit. It started to finally feel like it might get dire and desperate. But it's Christopher Nolan we're talking about here. The guy with no balls. The guy who plays it as safely and as mundane as possible.
For a film inspired by realism, grit, and themes of fear and hope, it sure as hell doesn't have much of any of it. It's certainly not very realistic (noted by its manufactured dialogue and unremitting silliness). It's all far too pristine and designed to have a deep nasty grit. Unless you count gurgling muffle mouths and a bald Caribbean Johnny Bravo scary, then where is the fear? Nor does it invite a desire to see victory because again... where is the fear? I don't see desperation in anyone. I don't see panic stricken citizens. I don't even think, "How is Batman gonna do it?" I just think, how much running time has to elapse until he just shows up? Without the lows, the highs aren't as sweet. It's just a flat line until the credits roll. I didn't care about a damn thing in this film.
Well, alright. The two biggest characters in the film sound like they are farting out of their mouths, the dialogue is unrealistic and contrived, and the film looks dull and lacks atmosphere. At least the action pays off!
Nah...not really. Actually, not at all.
Apparently they had enough time to squeeze in some answers for the audience via Marion Cotillard's oh-by-the-way lines regarding the energy solution Bruce Wayne just happened to have, but can't take time to explain how years of ninja training apparently lends to being able to flawlessly pilot an aircraft that looks like the underside of a squashed roly poly. The thing even manages to sound like Batman when it takes off. "Wherearetheotherdrugsgoinrarararaghagharagh!" The most exciting thing he does in it is outrun some missiles in a slow, unnecessarily time consuming extended "chase" sequence.
When he hops on his oversized double-sided microphone -- I'm sorry, bat-cycle -- the only thing he manages to do in his big entrance is drive back to his flying dead roly poly, but not before driving up a conveniently placed car carrier that just happens to be empty and aiming straight into a perfect way out. By the way, he's being chased by what looks like literally every fucking cop car in America on the slowest traffic day in the history of big cities-- and by slowest traffic, I mean, nearly none at all.
Anne Hathaway does her best girl moves and Batman punches faces while the camera spins around at eye or shoulder level, capturing some of the most uninspired choreography in a big budget film I've ever seen. For being a bad ass ninja assassin, the only moves Batman can seem to pull off is punching and...just punching, really. A lot of punching.
At least Tom Hardy LOOKS cool when he's fighting. His moves are varied and big. Sometimes they look like they actually could hurt or at least connect...all except the one move -- and you Batman fans know what I'm talking about -- the one attack they had to get right and it was a dud.
Truthfully, there's really hardly anything I enjoyed about this film and I didn't even get into the puerile onslaught of embarrassing one-liners, or how one particular death was so...man...so ridiculous I literally chortled out loud, or how many times we had to wait for some idiot to awkwardly explain someone's past. There is so much hey-before-you-go-let-me-fill-you-in asininity that I was face palming my way through half the run time.
The only reasons this review is salvaged from a score of 1, is because Levitt as John Blake was probably the most interesting character, scratch that, he was the ONLY interesting character in the entire film and Bane was sometimes fun to watch.
I pray to the movie gods that Christopher Nolan never touches another Batman film ever again. It's sad that his grubby producer fingers will more than likely have his soulless influence on the next reboot, but believe it or not, I will still hold out hope that that's not the case and he'll be better suited for production credit. I am relieved that his Batman run has ended. I fear the route that they go next, but at least it won't be through Nolan's eyes.
I genuinely wanted to like this film. I really truly wanted to. I wanted to finally say that I truly adored a Nolan film. I wanted to come back and finally write a glowing Batman review. I kept telling myself throughout the film, "Nah, just forget about that last scene. It's gonna get better. See it's getting better...wait...nope. Just forget about Bane's voice, maybe it was just that one...nope. Finally, the showdown, it's gonna end with a...nope." I sincerely tried. I can't stress to you enough how hard I tried to forgive its fault after fault after fault, but if you're being soaked with an endless shower of unintentionally comical drama, it's like trying to take a mall cop seriously who is wearing nothing but a pink diaper.
Have fun in the comments!
-J.G.