A good movie, but not a Nolan film

Rating: 7/10 (21 August 2012)

The Dark Knight Rises was the first Christopher Nolan movie I had seen since I became a fan of good film. So ever since that day I saw Inception, I had been anticipating this movie intensely. Unfortunately, it did disappoint. I was expecting a Christopher Nolan film, but what I got was a good action movie. It was like the most recent Pixar movies. Good, but lacking in the Pixar touch. The Dark Knight Rises was an entertaining and well made action movie, but fell short of the caliber of Christopher Nolan, falling to mediocrity, becoming a movie that any other director could have fabricated.
There are several reasons for my opinion, mostly stemming from one main deficiency that I find in no other Christopher Nolan movie. But I'll get to that later.
The acting was decent across the board with the shining beacon being Tom Hardy as Bane. Tom Hardy, in every role he has played, has hit the ball out of the park. In his role as Bane, he manages to be, in my opinion, scarier then the Joker (though overall not as quite as good). That's right folks, you heard that. He's the scariest villain I have ever viewed in film, and yet he goes farther, adding depth and emotion, all without using only his eyes and posture. His voice was also pretty awesome. Other than that, the rest of the cast, even the great Michael Cain performed only slightly above average. However, their average acting was not a result of their inability to act, but because of a uninspired dialogue.
The action scenes were well done with excellent special effects and some great shots during the final confrontations. This, combined with a score that stands as one of Hans Zimmer's greatest, made for some very intense scenes. However, they dragged a little long and after a while I tired of the constant explosions and gunfire.
But the root of the problem was not par acting or overextended action scenes, but Nolan's lack of efficiency in his writing. The Dark Knight Rises was 2 hours and 44 minutes, but probably should have been about 2 hours and 20 minutes. There were so many scenes that were used to developed character or to demonstrate the chaos in Gotham, but the were useless to the narrative. A mark of a good Christopher Nolan film such as The Dark Knight, is his ability to progress his characters using the storyline. Scenes that move along both the story of that world, not just the story of the individual characters. It was almost like side quests in a video game, except in a movie. By departing from the main story and creating these "side-scenes", Christopher Nolan worked with developing his characters, but sacrificed the flow of the movie, which in my opinion is one of the most important aspects of a movie. For an example of bad movie flow, I hated Wrath of the Titans, because it had really intense action sequences, then painfully boring dialogue which together whipped me back and forth like a rag doll until my brains flew out. Good directors such as Christopher Nolan, usually learn to use the events in the main narrative to develop their characters. Taking brakes and pausing the storyline to accommodate a scene to show something about the characters kept me from being immersed in his world and mentally exhausted me.
Christopher Nolan resorted to the "side-scenes" in order to juggle the many characters that he added (foolishly in some cases). The more main characters that are added to the story the harder it is to handle them all, and unfortunately, Christopher Nolan was unable to do that with his main narrative, and thus, resorted to sacrificing the flow of the movie with "side- scenes".
Don't get me wrong. This is a good movie and from what I've heard from other people they were entertained. But don't expect one of Christopher Nolan's signature immersive film experiences, cause you'll most likely be disappointed as I was. Expect a fun action flick with some emotion to back it up.