Dark knight rises how many stars

The Dark Knight Rises. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Film clips courtesy of Warner Bros Pictures. Hardy "steals the show" as Bane, but his mask makes him "incomprehensible".

Published 8 July There are many things to admire in "The Dark Knight Rises," and Nolan's bombast is a far, far higher grade than you'd find in a "Transformers" movie.

But nothing in the new film, which turns Gotham over to the masked terrorist Bane, played by an occasionally intelligible Tom Hardy, meets or exceeds the crises of "The Dark Knight," especially that picture's ferry-boat sequence, where Gotham's residents found themselves in a no-win situation and somehow won anyway. Nolan's notion of amping up the evildoing in "The Dark Knight Rises" is to simply layer the slaughter in higher and higher piles, though with a refreshing lack of computer-generated imagery.

The film picks up eight years after Wayne, taking the rap for the murder of district attorney Harvey Dent, has slunk into exile, with only Michael Caine's Alfred around for company. Gotham has won the war on organized crime, smeary-clown-makeup division.

But a nerve-racking alum of the League of Shadows has taken the Joker's place, and this barely human bull, Bane, a survivor of the worst underground prison around, plans to loose all of Gotham's worst criminals and turn the city into a perpetual melee of anarchy.

The script by Nolan and his brother Jonathan stirs in the cat burglar known as The Cat Anne Hathaway , as well as a philanthropist Marion Cotillard with an interest in Wayne's cold-fusion energy research. The film's great whatzit is a nuke with a six-mile blast radius, and the film's final hour hinges on the imminent possible elimination of 12 million souls.

Bane is cruel and callous. Like The Dark Knight , this movie has frequent, cringe-inducingly realistic violence on top of the standard, high-octane action violence that's so prevalent in superhero films.

Some moments are horrifyingly up close and personal: neck breakings, stabbings, hand-to-hand combat, and there's also the enormous collateral damage of wide scale destruction: bombings, fireballs, massive explosions, building collapses, shootings, and more.

Many, many people are trapped, held hostage, killed, tortured, and executed, and Bruce Wayne himself is injured in painful, nearly irreparable ways. Villain Bane is very scary-looking, with his mask and bulked-up aggression. A dead teen boy's body is shown washed up outside a sewer grate. Batman and Selina are at odds over Batman's "no guns, no killing" rule.

In one case, a passionate kiss leads to lovemaking, although the sex is off camera. Afterward, Bruce and his partner are shown she's bare-shouldered, he's bare-chested snuggling and kissing in front of a fireplace. In two other scenes, Bruce enjoys brief but passionate kisses with a woman. Language includes infrequent use of words including "damn," "bitch," "hell," and "sons of bitches," as well as "Jesus" as an exclamation and insults such as "idiot," "stupid," and "hag.

Part of a popular comic book franchise. No overt product placements, though some car brands are seen, and Bruce Wayne's black Lamborghini makes another appearance. Parents need to know that The Dark Knight Rises is the final installment in director Christopher Nolan 's dark, violent Batman trilogy.

Like its predecessors, The Dark Knight Rise s features ultra-violent scenes of torture and death that are too intense for younger kids used to the nearly comic, stylized action violence of other superhero films. A disturbingly high body count is achieved via massive explosions, kidnappings, neck breakings, shootings, and hand-to-hand combat. While there's not a lot of actual blood, there's tons of death and mass destruction. Bruce Wayne enjoys a few passionate kisses and one love scene that shows bare shoulders; swearing is very infrequent the strongest words used are "bitch" and "damn".

The film's villain, Bane, is monstrously muscled and frighteningly sadistic, and his mask is very scary looking. Despite the violence, be prepared for kids to beg to see the much-hyped Caped Crusader's latest adventure. Add your rating See all 42 parent reviews. Add your rating See all kid reviews. The citizens of Gotham live in complacent security until Bane Tom Hardy , a ruthless mercenary, arrives with a murderous agenda that threatens the very existence of Wayne's beloved city.

With their Batman trilogy, Nolan and Bale have revolutionized superhero films from colorful action adventures that even young kids can appreciate to serious meditations on justice and power. The franchise's loyal fans won't be disappointed with this immensely satisfying conclusion to Nolan's epic trilogy. Injured and relatively out of shape, Batman is physically no match for the huge and menacing Bane.

With his Hannibal Lecter-meets-Darth Vader mask and his overpowering physique, Hardy is completely disguised as the amoral assassin, but even rendered unrecognizable, the acclaimed British actor gives a masterful performance in villainy. Bale's always thoughtfully nuanced portrayal is complemented by the addition of two breakout performances: Gordon-Levitt -- whose character is an ordinary cop with an extraordinary bravery that's pivotal to the story -- and Hathaway, whose Selina Kyle steals the show with her whip-smart humor and crackling chemistry with Batman.

The banter between Bale and Hathaway who seems to be having a ball in full vixen mode provides much-needed relief from the story's otherwise overpoweringly grim nature. Visually stunning, incredibly acted, and unyieldingly intense, The Dark Knight Rises is one of the rare movies for which the huge budget, super-sized runtime almost three hours , and undying ardor of fans are well deserved.

Families can talk about the amount of violence in The Dark Knight Rises. How does it compare to what you've seen in other superhero movies? Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox.

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