Starring: Christian Bale (The Fighter), Tom Hardy (This Means War), Anne Hathaway (One Day).
Director: Christopher Nolan (Inception, The Dark Knight).
Screening: Reading Cinemas Queenstown daily 11am, 2.15pm, 5.30pm, 8.45pm.
5 stars (out of 5)
Starting with a mid-air rescue sequence which introduces us to our central villain Bane (a masked, bulked up Tom Hardy), director Nolan ensures that from the start, this is a superhero movie that gives us a satisfying end to a brilliant trilogy.
Since the Joker's attempts at anarchy in Gotham failed, the city has been cleaned up and Bruce Wayne has become an arthritic recluse with only his faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine) for company.
It's only when cat burglar Selina Kyle (Hathaway) emerges on the scene and manages to break into Wayne's safe, that Batman's presence is needed.
Instead of the madness of Heath Ledger's Joker, in Bane we have a highly intelligent and brutally dangerous physical threat to our caped crusader.
Intent on destroying Gotham, Bane is more than a match for Batman and his allies, including Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), who has invented more awesome toys for Batman to play with.
There are few movies that have concluded a trilogy as satisfyingly as The Dark Knight Rises and if I had to nitpick at anything it would be that some of Bane's dialogue was hard for us to understand. However, The Dark Knight Rises was everything we hoped it would be and packs an emotional punch that few will be expecting.
Totally recommended.
• Written by Sally Burgess
