The Dark Knight Rises, but falls below my expectations

There remains nothing left to be said about Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight. His extraordinary portrayal of Batman's most iconic enemy catapulted The Joker into the most esteemed circles of cinematic villainy. His nakedly evil charisma and pragmatism drives the film, which, even in hindsight, remains one of the best Hollywood blockbusters of all-time, the most exciting of its kind since Aliens. Batman Begins, my personal favourite of the trilogy, was unexpectedly political and relevant, almost, if you excuse the slang, 'artsy'. It's highly entertaining, and the most narratively coherent of the three, but it stands as a bold metaphor of the dangers of Capitalism and currency's chokehold on human existence. It's also very moving, exploiting the obvious humanity which makes Batman so much more relatable and appealling than most other Super Heroes. It's one of my favourite films of the Noughties, along with Nolan's second film, Memento. Nolan had a difficult task on his hands to match the quality of these movies with his third, and last, Batman film. Expectations were that he should exceed them; a near-impossible task, especially given the 'Third Part Curse', which seemingly plagues every trilogy save for Toy Story, and maybe Bourne. He fails.

The Dark Knight Rises is extremely disappointing, both as a filmic finale and as a film in its own right.

Nolan uses cheap plotting tricks and twists, and it quickly becomes clear that he ran out of ideas following the first two. The storyline is predictable; if you have even the most limited knowledge of the Batman universe, you should be able to realise what's around the corner. Each twist feels forced, surprising considering Nolan's previous successes with them; the warehouse explosion scene in The Dark Knight, the final reveal in The Prestige, and, basically, the entirety of Memento. The film trundles along confusedly, unsure of what it actually is. The transition between slower moments of (sadly cliched and now overly familiar) profundity concerning self-sacrifice, vigilante-ism and grief, and (the still compelling) action sequences is awkward and jolty, with obviously important scenes being ended abruptly, and edited for the sake of ramming-speed pacing.

The dialogue, although having never been Nolan's strongest suit, is particularly dreadful, hideously contrived and warped to move the story along as quickly as possible. There is no real flow, wit or intrigue in the script, just painful one-liners and boring monologues. The new characters are one-dimensional; Bane, with so much potential, is nothing more than a stereotypical anarchist-communist, who believes chaos is good for the common man, that the rich should be pay for being rich while others are poor, and so on and so forth. Blake, the beat-cop, is too perfect, too shiny. He is the modern, and actual, personification of the Harvey Dent White Knight of Gotham myth, except Nolan chooses this flawless hero trait as the character's sole backstory, rather than manipulating and twisting it like he did in the previous film in the creation of Two Face to symbolise man's natural corruption. Catwoman, although eh... aesthetically pleasing, is completely redundant and pointless in the plot's progression. Marion Cotillard's character cannot be adequately explained without mentioning spoilers, so I'll just say this; it's rubbish.

The film has its highlights; Caine, Bale and Oldman are as excellent as ever, and Tom Hardy, despite the cumbersome dialogue, is fantastic as Bane; his unique posh-Gypsy English accent and sad distant eyes inspires fascination, while his brooding hulk of a figure provokes fear and menace. As mentioned previously, the action scenes are still exciting, although not as clever as before.

The Dark Knight Rises is by no means a terrible movie, it's certainly above average when compared with your generic contemporary action film. It just feels as if it's trying too hard; too hard to be epic, too hard to be funny, too hard to be poetic, too hard to be emotional. It all too often descends into using monotonous, by-the-book narrative pressing, corny sentiments of patriotism/heroism or heavy-handed thematic exposition. In the end it's a confused, muddled mess, with some great set pieces, and some fantastic shots of Anne Hathaway's body parts in a tight, latex costume. At least we'll always have them. The film remains a complete cop-out, pandering to the box-office's unquenchable thirst for all things bigger but not necessarily better. Maybe Nolan made it as he did to appease Warner Brothers. Maybe it's the Batman film the public needed, not the Batman film the public deserved.

Mini Reviews #2

Same format as last time. 3 reviews, all less than, or equal to, 250 words. Enjoy.

The Counterfeiters

German cinema, and to a lesser extent, Spanish cinema, has always been the equivalent of the under-appreciated middle child in European film, with its intelligent, progressive, ambitious siblings, French and Italian cinema, taking most of the plaudits. This is in spite of Deutschland producing some of the most important and brilliant directors in film history, seemingly like clockwork; Fritz Lang, Wim Wenders, everyone’s favourite nutcase, Werner Herzog, and more recently, Olivier Hirschbiegel. I’d go as far as saying that it’s my third favourite country, cinematically at least, behind British and Korean. At the risk of sounding racist, German films are efficiently solid viewing. The Counterfeiters, a war drama about Jews who were recruited into a Nazi counterfeiting (funnily enough) operation tasked with destabilising the British and American economies, continues this trend. While it never quite flirts with the promised land of filmic greatness, it remains a well-acted, powerfully told insight into one of World War Two’s forgotten acts of bravery. There are excellent performances from Karl Markovics and August Diehl as two Jewish prisoners facing suitably difficult moral dilemmas; compromise your beliefs and survive, or martyr yourself as a hero for your cause. Devid Striesow is intriguingly complex as the officer in charge of the operation, sort of like a less charismatic, and chubbier, Oskar Schindler. He is utterly nonchalant about anti-semitism, and is only concerned with his personal success. The noirish, brass-focussed score is effective, and the ending, although predictable, is satisfying. A rewarding and moving, if not awe-inspiring, watch.

Tyrannosaur

Tyrannosaur is Paddy Considine’s (who I’ve met outside the Greggs on Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow by the way. Through the medium of online journalism, it’s as good a situation as any for name-dropping) directorial debut, and to use an English colloquialism, it is an absolute corker.  After giving one of my all-time favourite performances in Dead Man’s Shoes, one of the most disturbing and gut-wrenching films ever made, Considine proves here that he has just as much ability behind the camera as in front of it. His camerawork in portraying working class England is, inevitably, reminiscent of his mentor Shane Meadows, but it works effortlessly in the development of the appropriately depressing setting, and the quality of his writing is perhaps, although not as funny, even better than his aforementioned tutor. Eddie Marsan, is back at his best here, playing, yet again, a creepy, sad, terrifying little man. He plays this role so often that I’m beginning to think he might well be a creepy, sad, terrifying little man... Peter Mullan, a consistently excellent actor and faithful Celtic season-ticket holder, is even better. His heavy Glaswegian accent emphasises his abhorrence, anger and bitterness towards everyone and everything and it is terrifying to behold, yet the warmth he occasionally shows also incites in him a deeply sympathetic character. The highlight however is Olivia Colman. No superlative can adequately describe her. Very probably the best performance by an actress I’ve seen. Just watch her. She is quite literally jaw-dropping. A free hug for whoever spots the Celtic scarf Easter egg.

Ironclad

Ironclad can be summed up very simply and easily. It’s really, really terrible. But it’s also very, very violent. Which, when I assume the adolescent, testosteroney version of myself, (the same badass version who takes criminal delight in driving through red lights in Grand Theft Auto IV, and killing spiders in the house without shedding a single tear out of overwhelming fear which has clearly, obviously never happened before), it actually makes it quite good. Yes, the acting, dialogue and pacing are all completely rubbish, but you don’t watch a film like Ironclad for a Shakespearean-quality character study. You watch it to cry out ‘OOFFTTT’ as a guy is pummelled into 4 feet of mud with his own leg by an ugly, crazed, bearded maniac. You watch it to proclaim ‘EEERRGHHHH’ as a warrior’s decapitated head is used as a small shield by his adversary. You watch it to yell ‘OH GEE WHILLICKERS’ as some randomer is strangled to death with his small intestine, while his friend intervenes by cutting every main artery of the strangler, deflating him like a gore-filled balloon. Maybe. I don’t know, this analogy isn’t going anywhere. Basically, you watch it for gallons of blood being sprayed over the camera lens, and plenty of limbs flying all over the place like they’re unfunny jokes in an episode of The Big Bang Theory. It delivers in the brainless entertainment stakes. If you want anything other than an ultra-violent crapfest, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

See? Quite violent...