Over-rated, overly long,

Rating: 3/10 (11 August 2013)

I know I'm swimming against a tide of opinion which lauds this is a great movie, but for a number of reasons it fell very flat for me. Though I am a big fan of Director Christopher Nolan, I'm afraid a number of factors conspire to bring down his latest attempt to portray the iconic Super-hero, some of these factors being, in fairness, beyond his control. The first problem is merely the "jaded" factor; this is the 7th Batman Feature film in 24 years, not to mention an animated series and at least 3 feature-length animated movies. That isn't any fault of Christopher Nolan, though he seems to try to address it by making The "Dark Knight Rises" the biggest most intense Batman experience to date, and that in itself becomes a problem. Where Tim Burton's adaptation gets a balance of intensity while not taking itself too seriously, Nolan badly over-cooks it. Christian Bale's voice is so "growly" that it goes beyond dark and scary, and ends up just sounding like throat cancer. The next big problem for me is the character of Bane; Bane is the ultimate bad-ass on the comic page, in fact he's the guy who brings Batman down. Because in the world of Cinema this isn't allowed to happen (don't want to give away too much about the movie) Bane, instead of ratcheting up the intensity, ends up looking a bit bland and impotent. Next problem is plot-line. Okay, its a superhero move; I shouldn't be expecting Hamlet here, but among other problems the whole idea of holding Gotham City for ransom for months on end is both ridiculous and kills the pace of the movie, making it stagnant. Which brings us to the next problem; movie was way too long! A talented editor could have cut out a lot of unnecessary scenes, moved the action on quicker and made it a better movie in under 2 hours. We'll overlook the problem of the bad guy who, instead of killing the hero instantly, sends him off to die slowly and presumes all goes well. As Dr. Evil would say "You just don't get it, Scottie." And my final gripe is a shocking performance by the usually great Michael Cane (Bale, Oldman and Hathaway are merely acceptable, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy were, in fairness, very good). All in all these problems for me made this movie far less than the sum of its parts. This isn't the worst Batman movie, but its far from the best.