Last thing’s first: The conclusion–the actual, immediate conclusion, as in the last few minutes–of director Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy are absolutely perfect. Set up throughout the film, and in some instances throughout three films, each of the principal players gets a conclusion that’s a logical extension of that character’s personality, their role in the series and where they ended up at the end of The Dark Knight Rises.The road to actually getting there is somewhat more uneven; some critics have suggested that the story doesn’t make any sense, and while those people are apparently just not trying very hard, it’s certainly an overly-complex plot, where not every part of the film works. As someone who knows these characters and their backstory, it made elements of the movie easier to follow–but when one version of the continuity is presented only to have another version overwrite it shortly thereafter, it’s hrad to keep track the lies from the truth from the comics and keep a story straight.The “realistic” nature of Nolan’s Batman trilogy makes some of the film’s bigger set pieces feel implausible, and the final minutes of the film–which revolve around, essentially, trying to disable a bomb while on a ticking clock–feel out of place and overly “Hollywood” in a movie that’s decidedly not so.How not so? The fight scenes in this film are brutal; Bane is not only a physically dominating foe, but he’s a primal one. Whether he’s winning or losing a fight, he fights like an animal (although in a different way in each of those situations), and you don’t get any of the typical movie stuff, where the more heinous and bone-crunching parts of a fight are allowed to slip away. The result is a film that retains the visual style of Nolan’s Gotham, but still manages to look decidedly different during key moments than its predecessors did.
