The Dark Knight Rises

All good things come to an end. As for the case of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy, it's legENDary!

In all three instalments, Batman aka Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is truly challenged to the core only in The Dark Knight Rises. The story lifts off 8 years after the events of The Dark Knight. We see him limping. A visit to the doctor informs how damaged his body is. He requires artificial aid to even walk. Physically, he is at a great disadvantage from the very beginning. He's no longer the Batman we're used to seeing. Over the course of the plot, he loses his closest ally Alfred (Michael Caine), fortune, car, company, position as CEO, potential love interest before touching the death border as Bane breaks him to bits! Gotham escapes his grips, so does every of his Batman tech armory, not forgetting his own life too. Every attack hits close to home! Every swing on him is personal! You could feel the pain permeating from the screen! In an ever rising threat level like this, you need to watch to find out how Nolan plugs an ultimately satisfying arc for our beloved Caped Crusader to tread on! As Bruce fixes his back in the world's worst prison hole alike the bat pit he's fallen into when he was a child and attempts multiple times to escape it with failed jumps, he learns how to be Batman once again! There's also a constant reminder that Bruce needs to move on from Rachel, crimefighting, and even Gotham to an extent in order to find his own happy life. And when Alfred meets Bruce at the coffee shop just as he imagined he would, it puts a smile on everyone's face!

The Dark Knight Rises features some of the best action sequences you'll ever see in cinema! Selina's bar brawl, Bane hijacking a plane and towing it with another plane, Batman and Catwoman dual team takedown, Gotham's stock exchange market robbery plus the Bat's last push for a chase to destroy the unstable nuclear weapon during the climax are awesome! Batman's pursuit down the tunnel with all lights going off before being surrounded by cops and eventually escaping with the Bat is mind-blowing in every sense of the word! But by far, the most heartbreaking fight you'll ever witness in a Batman film is his first one-to-one encounter with Bane! Before we dive further into that heart-stopping low point, let us first talk about the elephant in the room — Bane. If you've ever wondered how intimidating, terrifying and bloodthirsty a terrorist can be, look no further! Bane is the absolute alpha supervillain! He is an impossible antagonist for Batman. The way he breathes through his masks and speaks sends chills! He is truly, Gotham's reckoning! He rains down calamity of the biggest order and turns Gotham into a post warzone city! Panic, tension and stakes are constantly at 100 whenever he's around! This is exactly why the tunnel fisticuffs is hard to watch. Batman, at the time of duel or even after recovery, is in no way, shape or form, matches Bane! To sit through Bane aka The Man Who Broke the Bat completely dismantling Batman to pieces will kill any Batman fan alive. Tom Hardy gives so much life to his assigned character! You can't help but admire the ferocity, velocity, tactics and strategy he employs during spars! Just look at the final battle for proof!

The screenplay this time around is definitively clearer in terms of plot, action line, character and spectacle. You know what the characters are up to, what they are working against or for, what is the immediate danger and who or what is at stake. Philosophical tropes such as importance of fear towards death resulting in Bruce losing the rope before making the jump are extraordinary touches! Dialogues and monologues are of premium quality! Walking on thin ice as part of the exile / death martial law punishment, officer Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) sharing the same past as Bruce Wayne and revealed to be Robin in the end, US national anthem echoing over the football stadium as Bane rises out of the darkness are marvelous notions!

Nolan's stellar use of practical effects leaves everyone in awe! Shifting room floor to reveal nuclear reactor's basement, city bridges come tumbling down, Batpod's horizontal tire rotations and the collapsing football stadium as the single player runs toward the camera are epic stuff! Hans Zimmer's soundtrack is God's own music! Glass cracking to form the Bat's symbol as part the franchise's tradition is fantastic! The way Wally Pfister's captures landscape and everything in the picture in general deserves multiple accolades of its own!