DARK KNIGHT RISES

When Bob Kane created Batman, he would not have imagined that some day a guy named Christopher Nolan with his cortege of actors, writers and technicians would come along and give a new meaning and identity to his super-hero so profound that it would be rated no less than the creation of the character itself! If reaching the top is difficult, staying there is furthermore difficult. Having scaled new peaks with his last two Batman movies I was under the impression that he had reached the top and if he just stays there with the current one, that itself would be a success. But as the quote of a car maker goes “Make the best car in the world. Then improve it!” he betters his own track record with his latest offering “Dark knight rises”. Having praised the movie, it doesn’t mean that it has unseen action sequences or eye popping CG works nor it has an entirely new story. But it has a new take on the Batman and his story, nice effort to link all the loose ends that arose due to the introduction of new characters and their back stories and a reemphasis on why Batman is, the way he is and why he does things that he does. If not for anything I admire the movie and its director for having brought a superhero subject to that of an intense drama where the protagonist is faced with all the dilemmas and confusions. A superhero is made only by the presence of a super villain and here there are two! The director makes us face them who are on the wrong side of moral and ideological turpitudes. As one of the line goes in the movie “any one can be the batman” and for a brief duration I was the batman! Yes, yes I know that your idea of batman doesn’t exactly match with a guy who is 5.6 with a paunch and of Indian origin. But hey! That’s the magic of the movies and I really felt it. Though the hero gets beaten, deceived, robbed, chased at and even mocked at he doesn’t waver from his sole objective, that of saving Gotham city. In one scene when the catwoman tells him that he has given everything to the city and need not bother about it anymore, for which Batman replies “Not everything, not yet”. This line pretty much sums up the movie. The same applies to the director as well. When I thought he had given everything in the first two installments, he comes up with this third movie and he says “not everything, not yet”. The one disappointment for me was, although the performances were top notch, their screen time was less due to infusion of new characters. But I think one can overlook this little blip. But on the positive side, the grave and imposing voice of the villain Bane, curves of Anne hathway, surprises in the form of Marion and Gordon lewitt and the last but certainly not the least; the music by Hans zimmer truly take the movie to a higher plane. It’s better to watch the prequels before you watch this movie as there are lot of references from its earlier stories. VERDICT: The dark knight rises and you better make way for him!