Where
is Robin when you need him? Or for that matter Spiderman?  Wait! Where
is Batman?? In this 2 hour and 25 minute movie we see way too much of
Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) not to forget Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) and
Bane, the villain (Tom Hardy), and  a young policeman (Joseph
Gordon-Levitt) plus the Commissioner (Gary Oldman), Batman/Bruce Wayne's
inventor Lucius (Morgan Freeman), a possible love interest in Miranda
Tate (Marion Cotillard) and various other characters but I thought this
was suppose to be a film about Batman, isn't it?

"The
Dark Knight Rises" is on its way to breaking records (if the shooting
today in Colorado doesn't keep people away from movie theatres) but it
is not half as interesting as Spiderman was, has a long, confusing plot
that goes in all directions and a not very interesting villain. Without
giving away any plot points two of them border on the ridiculous.

Michael
Caine, playing Wayne's butler/valet, disappears after being prominent
at the beginning with his hovering/worrying about Bruce being taken over
by Morgan Freeman with the latter not really offering anything
different in the part.

The
screenplay by Christopher Nolan, who also directed, and Jonathan Nolan,
goes into many and confusing directions. It can also bring up other
layers if you want to look at it politically with Bane (Bain?), the 1%,
the Occupy Wall street group and the destruction of Gotham city, which
certainly is New York here, bringing up scenes of 9/11, but don't waste
your time on those angles because your mind will be all over the place
until Batman, special effects,  stopping the world coming to an end
comes into play and off we go into comic book hero action.
Having
seen "The Amazing Spiderman" last week and "The Dark Knight Rises"
today I would recommend the former a lot more than the latter as it has
the better story, is shorter and though it also has an uninteresting
villain at least you can understand what he is saying.