The Dark Knight Rises - first review Will he save the day? ... The Dark Knight Rises. Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar Old superheroes never die; they simply hang up their capes and retreat to the shadows, awaiting the moment when fashions change and they're required again. One minute Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is hobbling around his country pile, leaning on his stick like a latterday Howard Hughes and woefully proclaiming that "there's nothing out there for me." The next he's back in the bat-suit, back in the saddle - recalled to save the world or Warner Bros, whatever comes first. Preamble complete, the dark knight duly rises for the bruising final stanza in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, a satisfying saga of revolution and redemption that ends the tale on a note of thunder. If viewers were wanting a corrective to the jumpsuit antics of The Avengers, or the noodling high-school angst of The Amazing Spider-Man, then rest assured that Batman delivers in spades. Here is a film of granite, monolithic intensity; a superhero romp so serious that it borders on the comical, like a children's fancy-dress party scripted by Victor Hugo and scored by Wagner. Still, cometh the hour, cometh the man. Gotham City is facing nuclear catastrophe, with the authorities powerless in the face of a hydra-headed terrorist threat. No sooner has Wayne affixed his bat-ears than he's being bamboozled by a mercurial cat-burglar (Anne Hathaway) and savaged by Bane (Tom Hardy); a fanatical warlord who comes disguised, rather alarmingly, as a monstrous rough-trade gimp. Poor Batman. Bane not only out-punches our hero, he out-rasps him too - delivering his lines in a choked, muddy drawl that makes him sound like Marlon Brando, down a well-shaft, gargling from a jerry-can. Bane might be fomenting a mass uprising against Gotham's moneyed elite; he might be singing the show-tunes from La Cage aux Folles. It is sometimes hard to tell. Watch the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises Link to this video So Bane lures Batman to the sewers and proceeds to beat him to a pulp, only for Batman to rise up, yet again, on a mission to storm the city and save the day. Bane can't believe it. He thinks it's impossible and says as much, gazing in horror at the illuminated bat-sign that signals his enemy's return. "Impoffububble," he says. Even at this stage, however, it is by no means certain that Batman will prevail. Gotham City is now in lock-down; with its bridges detonated and smirking revolutionaries in charge of the courts. Moreover, the man himself has been showing distinct signs of wear and tear. A doctor tells Wayne that he has no cartilage in his knees, and that his brain tissue is concussed. His back has been broken and imperfectly set (by Tom Conti, incidentally, which doesn't inspire much confidence). As Wayne hauls himself up from his slough of despond, he seems all-but primed to be sent tumbling right back down again. No such worries for the film itself. The Dark Knight Rises may be a hammy, portentous affair but Nolan directs it with aplomb. He takes these cod-heroic, costumed elements and whisks them into a tale of heavy-metal fury, full of pain and toil, surging uphill, across the flyovers, in search of a climax. "I'm still a believer in the Batman," murmurs Joseph Gordon-Levitt's rookie cop at one point. Arm-twisted, senses reeling, I am forced to concede that I am too.