The Dark Knight Rises Reviews
Top CriticThe story is dense, overlong, and studded with references that will make sense only to those intimate with Nolan's previous excursions into Batmanhood.
There was an opportunity here for Nolan to show us another way, to (again) stretch the boundaries of what is possible in a superhero film. Instead, alas, the latter half of The Dark Knight Rises retreats toward conventionality.
I'm not arguing that Rises should be Singin' in the Rain. But its Wagnerian ambitions are not matched by its material. It hasn't earned its darkness.
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| Original Score: C+
The biggest surprise may just be how satisfying Nolan has made his farewell to a Dark Knight trilogy that many fans will wish he'd extend to a 10-part series, at least.
Others will see it differently, but for me this is a disappointingly clunky and bombastic conclusion to a superior series -- Nolan's biggest and worst movie to date.
The director and cowriter/brother Jonathan Nolan pay heed to Wayne's wounded emotional arc. And the film is a feat of painstakingly crafted closure.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
TDKR completes on the great trilogies in movie history.
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| Original Score: 4.5/5
Yes, The Dark Knight Rises. And rises. And rises some more.
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| Original Score: B+
Nolan knows where the good stuff will be mined: big IMAX action scenes juxtaposed with intimate moments of dialogue.
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| Original Score: B+
This could - should - have been a swifter movie, but it sends the Batguy out in style. And let's face it, he's earned it.
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| Original Score: B
The canvas is epic, the themes are profound, the execution is ... clunky.
At over two hours and forty minutes long, with repeated scenes of bone-crunching violence and a maddeningly unrelenting percussive score by Hans Zimmer, The Dark Knight Rises is something of an ordeal to sit through.
Arguably the biggest, darkest, most thrilling and disturbing and utterly balls-out spectacle ever created for the screen.
Production-wise, effects-wise, Nolan's movie - much of its big action sequences shot with Imax cameras - is spectacular.
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| Original Score: 3/4
A fitting conclusion to an artful trilogy, culminating with satisfying dazzle, despite some notable flaws.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Nolan's finale gives us the inevitable with generous portions of suspense, surprise and delicious shock.
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| Original Score: 4/4
Moments are stretched. Every recollection must be illustrated by a flashback. Character motivations shift on a dime, and if you understand even half of what's going on -- not generally, but specifically -- you'll be doing better than most.
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| Original Score: 2/4
A satisfying and often breathtaking tale of good and evil.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
In case you'd forgotten - and the summer of 2012 has given us much to forget - this is what a superhero movie is supposed to look like.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Speaking lines they cannot possibly understand, not one actor makes any attempt to be believable. So manufactured and synthetic that they eventually lose all sense of reality, they're like reconstituted orange juice and processed cheese.
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| Original Score: 1/4
The grave and satisfying finish to Mr. Nolan's operatic bat-trilogy.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
A disturbing experience we live through as much as a film we watch, this dazzling conclusion to director Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy is more than an exceptional superhero movie, it is masterful filmmaking by any standard.
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| Original Score: 5/5
Saddled with the impossible expectations surrounding the final chapter in his trilogy of Batman movies, Nolan surprises by one-upping you. He gives you more than you expected.
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| Original Score: 4/4
While director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale's epic of criminality and all-consuming conviction ultimately falls a bit short, their Batman trilogy ends with a suitably thrilling mix of guts and glory.
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| Original Score: 4/5
[Nolan] has made a completely satisfying movie with The Dark Knight Rises, one steeped enough in self-contained mythology to reward hard-core fans while giving less invested viewers a rousing, adroitly executed piece of popcorn entertainment.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
This is a sequel that succeeds, meeting expectations built ridiculously high by fan culture and savvy marketing. In the end, Nolan's Dark Knight rises to the occasion.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
The script, by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, takes a few vague pokes at Wall Street and the financial elite but mainly revives the ponderous psychodrama of the first movie.
What worked beautifully in "The Dark Knight" seems overworked and almost ridiculously grim in "The Dark Knight Rises."
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
An epic and then-some send-off to a character, and a franchise, that made it safe for superheroes to get serious.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Christopher Nolan's dramatically and emotionally satisfying wrap-up to the Dark Knight trilogy adroitly avoids clichés and gleefully subverts your expectations at every turn.
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| Original Score: 4/4
The film begins slowly with a murky plot and too many new characters, but builds to a sensational climax.
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| Original Score: 3/4
As a cop tells a younger partner when Batman first reappears, "Boy, you're in for a show tonight, son." And, indeed, it's been quite a show.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
If the film is not quite the achievement "The Dark Knight" was -- and maybe that's the real question -- it's still a fitting end to a very ambitious series.
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| Original Score: 4/5
The Dark Knight Rises ultimately justifies its length (in fact, a good argument could be made for a longer cut) and the last 45 minutes is nothing short of spectacular.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
It is, through and through, a Nolan movie - a brooding, complicated film that asks that you come to the theater prepared and that you watch the movie engaged.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Chaos reigns for much of The Dark Knight Rises, often in big, beautiful, IMAX-size scenes that only Nolan could have conceived.
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| Original Score: B
The history of Batman's burden is, however, increasingly cumbersome, and it's Mr. Bane who finally makes the pertinent point: "Gotham is beyond saving and must be allowed to die."
"Merely great" feels like the most backhanded of compliments, but when a filmmaker is coming off a one-two punch of pop masterpieces like The Dark Knight and Inception, expectations get invariably raised for what comes next.
This Knight not only rises, it also cuts deep -- not just as spectacular entertainment but also as harrowing drama.
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| Original Score: 4/4
My faith that a truly important piece can be gleaned from these tales of costumed champions has been broken.
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| Original Score: 3/5
It's spectacular, to be sure, but also remarkable for its all-encompassing gloom.
This is the problem when you're an exceptional, visionary filmmaker. When you give people something extraordinary, they expect it every time. Anything short of that feels like a letdown.
The Dark Knight Rises only rarely starts to tremor under the weight of its own portent, and is not without its own sly humor. Well done.
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| Original Score: 4/5
For once a melodrama with pulp origins convinces viewers that it can be the modern equivalent to Greek myths or a Jonathan Swift satire. TDKR is that big, that bitter -- a film of grand ambitions and epic achievement.
Potent and provocative, The Dark Knight Rises is the King Daddy of summer movie epics.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Retains the moral urgency and serious-minded pulp instincts that have made the Warners franchise a beacon of integrity in an increasingly comicbook-driven Hollywood universe.
Big-time Hollywood filmmaking at its most massively accomplished, this last installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy makes everything in the rival Marvel universe look thoroughly silly and childish.
The way the various strands tie up is a mite predictable, but it's satisfying nonetheless.
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| Original Score: 4/5
