The Dark Knight Rises is a pretty divisive film. For every person claiming it to be the perfect end to Christopher Nolan's Bat-trilogy, there's someone quick to scream "But how did he get back to Gotham?" and dismiss the whole thing. I'm firmly in the former camp, on both the overall film and one of its biggest points of contention - Bane. Oddly, much of the complaining around the film's villain didn't actually come from the character himself, but the voice. Tom Hardy went for an incredibly sly growl that, with a lack of lip movement to help, was certainly not the easiest delivery to understand. However, if it ever came across as muffled or otherwise incomprehensible that's more down to the cinema's audio than Hardy's performance or Nolan's editing; on Blu-Ray in glorious 5.1 it's great. Take away that niggle and there's a lot to love. Bane may be all about theatrics, his scheme essentially being to publicly torture Gotham before blowing it up, but Hardy's performance is pretty subtle. It's naturally all in the eyes, and through the gaps in the mask he manages to show a range of complex emotions; anger, contempt and, in a last minute twist, love. His hulking size is reminiscent of Bronson, and he certainly works out fear from that, but the physical expression is a world away.
