Rising

Emily and I went to watch The Dark Knight Rises on Friday at the local theater. Without dwelling on the tragedy in Aurora and without (hopefully) throwing any spoiler's your way, here are a couple of observations:

First of all, I appreciated the treatment of police officers in this movie.

Too many times in the movies, the cops are treated in one of two ways. Either they are dumb props for car chases, shootouts, etc, or they are shown to be corrupt, overly brutal or in some other way "dirty".

In this movie, it is not only Batman shown rising from difficult circumstances, the cops are too. they are shown charging, heavily outgunned, into the face of occupiers, even when they are likely to be gunned down. I think it does a great job of exemplifying the attitude that is drilled into police officers, that they are still in the fight, unless they are dead, and they are not allowed to die.

I don't think this is a spoiler, but they even show how a cop, reluctant to face the enemy because he wants to be there for his family, overcomes his fears and does his job. Most cops know that on any given day, they could be faced with life threatening situations, and they still do their job. I know it sounds a bit self serving on my part, but I am privileged to affiliate with men and women of this caliber every day.

And, I noticed police officers stationed outside the theater. As much as I hear complaints about cops, everyone there seemed glad to have them nearby.