Thursday, October 1, 2026
*** out of *****
Running time: 164 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some sensuality and language.
The Dark Knight Rises has been one of this year's most highly-anticipated films. But the magic and wonder has gone out of director Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. This 164-minute finale to the current rendition of the saga is a grim, muddled funeral dirge, lacking the drive, imaginative flights of fantasy and fun of its predecessors.
What's worse, much of the picture's dialogue is impossible to hear properly. The sound mix is like listening to a conversation through a wet sponge. The villain's dialogue, spoken through a mask that distorts his voice, is almost comically impossible to understand. I often had to turn to my neighbor and ask what was just said, only to be answered by a shrug.
The picture was co-written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who has become one of the movie industry's most innovative filmmakers. In less than a decade he has given us such ground-breaking pictures as Memento, Inception and The Prestige, along with the previous Dark Knight films. When beginning production on The Dark Knight he seemed at the peak of his game. His brilliant employment of cutting-edge visual effects, delicately interwoven through finely-crafted scripts, has become a hallmark of quality which has also brought in billions of dollars to the film studios for whom he labors.
But something happened in The Dark Knight Rises which is reminiscent of other wunderkind missteps in the past. Just as some of our greatest directors tried to reach too far after their own meteoric successes, Nolan has succumbed with his latest effort. The stumbles of Francis Ford Coppola (One from the Heart), Martin Scorsese (New York, New York), Dennis Hopper (The Last Movie), Steven Spielberg (1941) and Michael Cimino (Heaven's Gate) remind us that no great director is safe from his own unflinching pursuit of a singular vision.
