6. Casting Matthew Modine
Chris Nolan is known for making left-field casting decisions, and resurrecting the careers of forgotten talents, sometimes with great success. Unfortunately for The Dark Knight Rises, the decision to cast former Full Metal Jacket star Modine as Deputy Commissioner Foley was not to lead to one of those successes. He has always been a fairly one-dimensional actor, making very few waves in the industry since 1995's disastrous Cutthroat Island all but consigned him to the TV Movie pile for good. Films like Frenemy, The Shipment and Funky Monkey became the norm, with any well-received movie projects becoming sparse exceptions, and it's rather telling that the majority of his latest out-put has been shared between Shorts and TV work. I was more than willing to accept that Modine was just a victim of Cutthroat Island's problems and the resultant drying up of offers - and so, clearly was Chris Nolan. But his performance in Rises is completely sterile, robbing any impact from a character who already skirted the line between welcome and superfluous and making an interesting side-plot for Commissioner Gordon no more than a distraction. And that shot of his dead body, after his character had an inevitable change of heart, was way, way too blatant to have had any impact as well.