Daredevil
Never Sets the Screen on Fire
Daredevil
Never Sets the Screen on Fire
It's unfortunate I have to write my review for Daredevil the same day
Oscar nominations were announced. This was a day for honoring cinema's most
daring motion pictures, not its most hackneyed.
Is Daredevil any good? It's OK. It's not bad. It's just terribly uninspired.
It doesn't have a style uniquely its own. It doesn't have that awesome pop energy
that Spider-Man and The X-Men had, or that larger-than-life, big-screen
urgency that the first Batman and the first two Superman movies
had. It feels more like a knock-off, an imitator, a hodgepodge of several movies
thrown together in a 90-minute mix of calculated thrills.
First, the plot set-up. For those familiar with the Daredevil legend, there
will be few spoilers here.
Based on the Marvel comic book, Daredevil tells the story of New York
attorney Matt Murdock (Ben Affleck), who was accidentally blinded as
a child by toxic waste after he saw his boxer-father (David Keith) roughing
up someone in an alley for money. The accident knocks out one of young Matt's
senses, but enhances his remaining four. Suddenty, the boy can hear conversations
in the next room, smell perfume and cologne in the air before the person can
get close, and his enhanced sense of touch allows him to perform feats of balance
and daring that would make Evil Knievel gasp.
Pathos enters the picture when Daddy Murdock is killed by a shadowy figure known
as the Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan), and Matt vows to devote his life
to fighting crime both with his mind (as a lawyer) and with his new sensory
powers (as a costumed superhero). His father's nickname in the ring was "The
Devil," so he adopts the alter ego "Daredevil" and stalks the
mean streets of Lower Manhattan ready to do battle with whatever bad guys come
his way.
Here is what I didn't like about the movie. As directed by Mark Steven Johnson,
the film rips off the Batman flicks in a way that I think is insulting.
This film has almost the exact same structure as Tim Burton's 1989 original
right down to the nosy reporter (Joe Pantoliano), the superhero as urban
legend, the tough-talking hoods in alleyways, and the love interest who discovers
his identity way before she should. It also steals liberally from the Blade
films and The Crow in its vigilante, soul-searching anti-hero, who struggles
with becoming bad to fight bad while still trying to maintain a sliver of goodness.
I went into this film completely ready to give Affleck a fair chance. I have
enjoyed him in a number of films in the past, ranging from Chasing Amy
to Good Will Hunting to last year's Changing Lanes. Is he vastly
over-exposed? Without a doubt. But I've found him to be a serviceable lead in
the past. There was no reason he wouldn't make a good Daredevil here. He doesn't.
His best moments are in his romantic interactions with Elektra (Jennifer
Garner), the martial-arts turbo hottie daughter of a local billionaire being
strong-armed by the Kingpin. They have a playground joust that is as fun as
anything we saw in Spider-Man last spring. But when Affleck has to play
scenes where Matt is soul-searching, where he is tortured, where he has to deliver
a film-noirish voiceover, the results are just laughable. In fact, the audience
I saw it with did laugh.
The guy just doesn't have it in him.
Daredevil doesn't really have a musical theme either that can help audiences
attach themselves to the character. Instead, most of the action is set against
the music of Fuel and other hot acts from today. And the action is perhaps
what has me down the most on this film. I liked several of the fight sequences.
Although, once again, The Matrix is ripped off like you wouldn't believe.
With Daredevil, I totally bought that Murdock's enhanced senses could
give him the amazing reflexes needed to fight hordes of bad guys all at one
time.
What I didn't buy was the filmmakers giving the character superhuman capabilities
in that he could leap off tall buildings and survive and also leap from rooftop
to rooftop without breaking his ankles. Spider-Man could do that because he
had radioactive spider venom in him. Blade could do that because he was part
vampire. And Batman always had some kind of rope contraption or parachute cape
to slow his descent. But Daredevil is just a sensory-enhanced regular guy. He
might have done some of this stuff in the old comics. But in the context of
the film story, it makes no sense and pulls you out of the movie.
That said, there are a number of things I greatly enjoyed about Daredevil,
too. The biggest reason to see the movie is the performance of Colin Farrell
as Bullseye, an Irish hitman who never misses whenever he throws a knife, a
dart, a needle, anything. Farrell has terrific fun in the part, and I loved
the simple-minded glee he took in killing. There's nothing terribly graphic
in Daredevil, but every scene where Bullseye is featured, he has to kill
somebody. He's just that kind of guy. How he deals with an annoying passenger
sitting next to him on a trans-Atlantic flight is the movie's top highlight.
Garner as Elektra was also fabulous, although I was a bit surprised by how little
she is actually in the film. It's great that the film remains centered on Daredevil,
but Garner is the one who audiences are going to really respond to when they
see the film. Her pain and anguish over the losses she seeks to avenge is more
palpable, more compelling than Matt's. And you get the sense at several points
that this is a woman whose pain really threatens to overwhelm her, that she
could slip up and make a fatal mistake. Daredevil is touted as "The Man
Without Fear," and a lot of the audience's sympathy is drained from the
character because of his icy demeanor. If he doesn't care about his own life,
why should we?
So, a mixed review on Daredevil. I wish this had been a movie without
fear. I wish it had been a movie that had given us a new character and moved
us in new directions with new spectacle and new thrills. The movie doesn't have
one moment in it where I went, "Wow!" And for a comic-book flick,
that's just tragic.
Daredevil is rated PG-13 for action violence and some sexuality.
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