Ror Revisits: Daredevil

Well, it ain't no masterpiece! But its certainly under rated. Although after watching it again I was struck by a few annoyances that slipped by me back in the day.

The film follows(loosely) Frank Miller's version of Matt Murdock's origin story. An accident as a child leaves him blind but heightens his remaining senses. As an adult, he fights for justice as a lawyer by day and superhero by night - until a romance with Elektra brings him up against crime boss Kingpin and bat shit crazy assassin-for-hire Bullseye.

Daredevil is the fourth Marvel character to make his big screen debut after Blade, The X-Men and Spider-Man, and writer/Director Mark Stephen Johnson does a good job of setting it apart from those movies. Its quite a bit darker and edgier than Spider-Man or X-Men, but never crosses into the splatter territory of Blade(although the R rated directors cut does up the violence quota). He also decides to skip over the usual Super Hero staple of the training, coming into their own as a hero type thing. There are a few early scenes when he's a kid but then its straight into the action as Murdock is hopping around buildings as a costumes vigilante in his prime. He regularly gets the tar beat out of him too of course, and the film does a good job of showing this side of it. Murdock/Daredevil is also one of the more faithful incarnations of a comic character we have seen in a movie. He hits all the right notes with Daredevil's viciousness and unrelenting pursuit of justice for the people of Hell's Kitchen as well as his increasing worry that he's beginning to go too far and cross the line from hero to villain. Ben Affleck gives possibly his best performance in this too..although even thats not as good as it should be! Without meaning to sound mean, Affleck just can't help being..Affleck! He's just not a very likable leading man, and is a bit lacking in the charisma stakes. But like I said, he's not bad at all in this despite that because Johnson's script is actually very strong(What the Hell happened with Ghost Rider?) The rest of the cast are all on solid form too. Jennifer Garner isn't exactly the Elekta we know and love from the comics, but she certainly does a good job with this movieverse's version. Michael Clarke Duncan is decent as Kingpin although a few of his lines fall flat. Colin Farrel is over the top to say the least as Irish fruitcake Bullseye, but he still manages to steal the movie.

The major problems with the film are the action scenes and stunt/wire work. Daredevil runs and flips around the city in bad cgi, and when its actually Affleck involved in the action scenes he looks as stiff as a board in his red leather fetish gear(would it have killed them to put the huge zipper on the side?). Also the infamous play ground fight/flirt scene between DD and Elekta truly is horrible to behold. I actually don't know how it made the final cut because it belongs in the type of film both Garner and Affleck would usually make..a shite one! And then the awful wire jumps, cgi leaps and pirouettes continue into every action and fight scene(a brutal scrap between Elekta and Bullseye an exception). I'm usually not a big stickler for these things if the other aspects of the movie hold up. I'll take good acting and script with bad action over the reverse any day, but so much of these set pieces are integral to the driving narrative here that they really do hamstring it. Another thing that didn't seem to bother me before is the music. I don't actually mind Evanescence but Johnson really over uses them in this. The songs are used in an attempt to heighten some already emotional scenes so its just over kill.

So by no means the disaster some see it as, but there is a lot of room for improvement. Hopefully the reboot will improve on the set pieces and flow of the action while maintaining the attention paid to the characters.