A Great Effect: Bane's Voice

There is much to like in The Dark Knight Rises, but I think, at the end of the day, what I like most is : Bane's voice.

The face of the actor playing Bane -- Tom Hardy -- is obscured for 99% of the movie, there is only one brief shot of his face(in pre-Bane flashback) near the end. So Hardy has to get it done with his muscular body(really his, I've read) and that incredible choice of a filtered voice(ALSO his, I've read.)

The voice tantalizes in the listening because it is CLOSE -- but not close enough -- to a couple of other famous voices: Sean Connery (sometimes) and Robert Shaw(in his "Quint" mode from Jaws.)

Again, close but not close enough. One hears a little of Connery's Scottish brogue and a little of Quint's growling mid-Atlantic "lilt" -- but not really. Not decisively. It is something else, this voice.

And it has a cadence...as in one of Bane's lines near the end: "You'll have to IMAGINE the flames!"

Bane's voice is great all the way through, but I particularly like it in the opening "mid-air escape" sequence and when he lays down the law at the football game he has just blown up.

That is all.