Nothing but pain and tragedy

The Dark Knight Rises ««½
PG-13, 164m. 2012

Cast & Credits: Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Gary Oldman (Commissioner James Gordon), Tom Hardy (Bane), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (John Blake), Anne Hathaway (Selina Kyle), Marion Cotillard (Miranda Tate), Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox), Mathew Modine (Foley). Screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan. Directed by Christopher Nolan.

Even if the national tragedy July 20 in Aurora, Colorado where a gunman shot 70 people, injuring 58 and killing 12, at a movie theater on opening night during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises had not happened, and the red carpet celebrations had gone on around the world with entertainment press interviews by the cast and crew, my ambivalent feelings about director Christopher Nolan’s much awaited final installment of the Batman franchise (at least as far as Nolan’s involvement is concerned) would be no different.

The Dark Knight Rises is a depressingly loud, joyless, violent third installment that like its 2008 predecessor once again feels compelled to pound me over the head with various plot points echoing current events. The Occupy Wall Street movement will likely roar with glee seeing wealthy corporate executives sentenced to “exile” by kangaroo courts in which the guilty are forced to walk on Gotham City’s icy lake shore, none of whom make it across alive. The city’s wealthiest are cast out onto the streets as the most dangerous criminals are liberated by Bane (Tom Hardy), a hulking muscle-bound behemoth whose voice is barely audible as a result of the modulator his mouth is attached to.

Necks are broken. The city’s police are trapped underground. A football team is wiped out on opening day. Special forces soldiers are made examples of by Bane’s henchmen as they are murdered and hanged from helicopters and flown around the city. When the president of the United States assures the citizens of Gotham the country stands with them during the chaos, Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) interprets it as meaning the city’s remaining police force is on their own with no help from the outside.

All the while, after being betrayed by Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) a cat-burglar who prowls the night in black spandex and high heeled silver spiked boots, a mortally wounded Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), his spine broken during his battle early on with Bane, is allowed to witness the destruction on a flat-screen TV in a far-off country underground inside the world’s worst prison from within his cell.

“We will destroy Gotham and then, when it is done and Gotham is ashes, then you have my permission to die,” Bane tells Batman’s Wayne.

The most positive thing I can say about The Dark Knight Rises is at two hours and 44 minutes, I did not feel like I sat there for three hours plus (when you count the 20-25 minutes of trailers shown before the film). Not once did I feel the need to check the time on my iPhone. The only time I got distracted, in light of the mass shooting three days ago, was when a guy dressed in black trashy clothes sitting at the bottom row walked out of the theater during the first hour though he didn’t head for the exit doors up front. He was just going on a bathroom break.

I had no problem with Nolan’s previous installment, The Dark Knight (2008), being a portrait of the country’s current war on terrorism. That’s what made the film such a surprise and kept me on edge. Bruce Wayne’s Batman was Gotham City’s rendition of President George W. Bush (2001-2009) in the way he was eventually despised for his rough tactics of beating confessions out of criminals and ease dropping on citizen’s cell phones as a means to catch The Joker (Heath Ledger).

Ledger’s Joker was exactly as the late actor, who died in 2008, said he was, “a psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy.” If Batman was “Dubya”, The Joker was Gotham City’s resident Osama bin Laden in clown make-up.

The trouble with The Dark Knight Rises is there is no surprise this time with the way today’s current events are matched up with the film’s various plot points. When Bane utters how he is a member of The League of Shadows who is out to fulfill Ras-Al-Ghul’s destiny (Liam Neeson from Batman Begins – 2005) and bring about Gotham City’s destruction, I could already see the references to Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. I don’t see how anyone cannot think of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba that our government has been using to house the country’s most dangerous terrorists since 9/11 when Bane talks how Gotham City’s prisoners have been locked up for years inside Blackgate Prison and denied parole in the film.

After being subjected to the tragedy in Aurora the past weekend, I went into The Dark Knight Rises hoping I could get away from being reminded of all the violence plaguing the world. Isn’t that the purpose of seeing movies to begin with? Perhaps it’s just me but I have always expected comic book movies to be full of humor and not be too serious. It’s the reason I am more embracing of directors Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher’s takes on the Batman legend (1989-1997) as they didn’t echo current events and were more of a nod to the old Batman TV series of the 1960s with Adam West and Burt Ward.

Looking back on Nolan’s Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and now this one reminds me how this trilogy was mostly humorless. Maybe Michael Caine’s Alfred was right when he told Bruce Wayne how he never wanted him to come back to Gotham City.

“I always knew that there was nothing for you here except pain and tragedy,” he said.

©7/23/12