The Dark Knight Rises - The Doctor & The Mercenary"Innocence cannot flower underground. It has to be stamped out.”
This Chapter is all explanation and backstory as Tom Conti, playing a prisoner who can fix Bruce Wayne's back, tells the story of a child born here that Bruce believes to be Bane. Conti's a fine actor, though he's no Michael Caine when it comes to telling a story. The writing a dull so that even with the visuals this is a drag, which is unfortunate because the story is important to tying in the League of Shadows and Ducard/Ra's al Ghul, plus it sets up a surprise for late in the film. Perhaps that's what trips this scene up. The story explains Bane's mask, given to him by a different prison doctor and then talks about this kid, who we should assume to be Bane so that the story can twist us later. So the mask brings up a lot of unanswered questions and the drama of the story is too brief.
Let me try to explain by writing about a film that treats a similar situation in the exact opposite way. V For Vendetta has a sequence where Natalie Portman's character is imprisoned and tortured. She survives by learning the story of two women imprisoned for being lesbian. Their story is given an unusual amount of time, stopping the main film, but the side trip is really interesting on its own and in the end it's easier to understand the impact it has on Portman and the commentary it makes on the film. It's a gamble to divert for so long, but the gamble works. Here, the story is a condensed version of that gamble, but Nolan doesn't edit it down for time, he does it so as not to give away that the kid and Bane are two different people. It's done to trick us, but more importantly in trimming the story down it loses most of the dramatic interest.
Rating: * * 1/2