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5
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10 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Daredevil
who?
Basing
a big budget, mainstream Hollywood film on a superhero
comic with limited cult appeal is risky business.
Can the filmmakers make it accessible to the clueless
masses
turning them on to those aspects of the character
that intrigue the relatively small number of fans
while simultaneously retaining the devotee's approval?
There have been precedents for such an attempt.
The 1997 translation of Todd McFarlane's Spawn
to the silver screen had been a modest success;
Marvel and New Line hit pay-dirt the following
year with Blade, featuring
a superhero nobody outside of comic book geekdom
had ever heard of. So why couldn't it work again?
Thus Fox, hot on the heels of Spider-Man's
box-office bonanza, teamed with Marvel to produce
Daredevil. In this
case the effort yields very mixed results. The
film falls flat on its face about as often as
it succeeds.
Ben Affleck is Matt Murdock, attorney by day,
costumed crime fighter Daredevil by night. Blinded
by a spray of toxic chemicals when he was 12,
he developed his remaining four senses to a superhuman
level. Murdock's unique 'radar vision' allows
him to actually 'see' in a way no other person
can. (And which is intriguingly realized via the
character's POV shots in the film.) That he can't
sling webs or fly is compensated for by his incredible
acrobatic skills, a la Batman. And like Gotham
City's Caped Crusader, his choice of costume and
vigilante alter ego also has its genesis in childhood
trauma: the murder of his father (David Keith),
a professional boxer nicknamed "The Devil", rubbed
out by mobsters for refusing to take a dive. No
one was ever prosecuted for the crime. From that
day onwards young Matt swore to dispense justice
outside the law whenever the system failed to
protect the innocent and weak. If such "justice"
meant cracking some criminal's skull with one
of his combat batons, then so be it.
All this
requisite 'origins' info is presented via flashback
and narration by Murdock in the film's first 20
minutes or
so. Aside from a
big fight scene in which he cleans out a criminal
hangout in pursuit of an acquitted rapist, the
remainder of the film centers on Murdock's romance
with the beautiful Elektra (the much-hyped Jennifer
Garner) and confrontations with Bullseye (Colin
Farrell), a crazed Irish assassin sent to kill
him. Elektra, by the way, just happens to be an
incredible martial artist in her own right, having
trained in a variety of disciplines since age
6. Bullseye's lethal services have been procured
by Kingpin (Michael Clark Duncan), the Boss of
Bosses in the New York underworld, who wants the
pesky superhero taken out. Meanwhile, a tabloid
reporter (Joe Pantoliano) collects clues which
point to a certain blind attorney as the "Man
Without Fear" the
masked, horned vigilante known as Daredevil.
Sure, we've all been
there and done that as far as superhero flicks
go. But if you have a problem with the familiar
clichιs then you basically have a problem with
the source material that spawned them, too because
the comic books pretty much ripped each other
off from Day One. The Daredevil character, who's
been around 40 years now, was essentially Marvel's
answer to DC's Batman. As Stan Lee readily admits
in one of the DVD's featurettes (see below), a
tremendous amount of thought never went into these
characters to begin with. So is Daredevil just
Batman in a red suit? Well, you will see
the hero lurking on rooftops at night, jumping
and swinging from building to building, armed
with a variety of gadgets. He kicks Bad Guy ass.
His love life is a bit complicated. His secret
identity as a crimefighter brings with it a number
of psychological complications. But no, this isn't
Batman... It's Daredevil. He doesn't wear
a cape.
I
expected to hate this movie based on word-of-mouth
and the reviews I'd read, but I didn't. Yes, it's
a deeply flawed picture. Mainly it seems to be
missing about 30 minutes of story, resulting in
a rather choppy, hollow narrative. (Murdock transitions
from prosecutor to defense attorney in the blink
of an eye; his romance with Elektra is sketchy
at best; we learn virtually nothing about villains
Kingpin and Bullseye.) Even though the slick visual
style often succeeds in capturing the look of
today's modern comics, every major set-piece is
edited like a music video and accompanied by thumping
pop metal/rap tunes, giving the film a severe
(and ultimately taxing) case of 'MTV-itis'. (To
be fair, one of the songs
"Bring Me To Life" by Evanescense, used as a theme
for Elektra is
quite good and went on to become a major hit.)
Yet the film kept me mildly entertained. Affleck
is actually okay as the hero, in both Murdock
and Daredevil modes. Farrell seems like he's enjoying
the hell out of himself. His maniacal Bullseye
whose fame as an
assassin lies in his uncanny accuracy with any
thrown object totally
steals the movie whenever he appears, which is
not often enough. (I liked the concept of a supervillain
who in all respects except his 'talent' is otherwise
just an obnoxious punk.) Garner isn't a terrible
actress and has a fabulous bod; her main contribution
is simply to look awesome. This she achieves.
Perhaps there's a bit too much
wire-fu and CGI in evidence but at least it's
generally well-handled. The computer effects
a couple of dodgy scenes aside are easily as
good as anything in Spider-Man
and won't induce groans like the Playstation fighters
of Blade II. Besides,
I'm a sucker for the whole superhero thing anyway...
even if Daredevil was never one of my faves growing
up.
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Continuing
the trend of major studios loading their 'blockbuster'
DVD releases with as much stuff as possible, Daredevil
arrives as a 2-disc set crammed with hours and hours
of bonus material and special features. A/V specs
are, of course, exemplary. Sound quality is particularly
rich, as much attention was paid by the filmmakers
in creating an extremely immersive aural landscape
to underscore the blindness of the main character.
And there are a LOT of extras on these discs...
Disc 1, which contains the film, features an audio
commentary by director Mark Johnson and producer
Gary Foster. Needless to say it's a bit too close
to the theatrical release the flick was in theaters
less than 6 months ago for these guys to provide
a truly detached retrospective. Disc 1 also includes
a text commentary, similar to the ones found on
Paramount's Star Trek Director's Cut DVDs,
imparting a plethora of background information on
the production. Techies can also enable "Enhanced
Viewing Mode" to screen the film with visual effects
supervisor Jon Kilkenny making periodic comments
on selected scenes.
Disc 2 contains the balance of
the bonus materials. These are divided into two
sections, highlighting the film and Daredevil's
comic book origins respectively. The section devoted
to the Daredevil character and the Marvel comic
is terrific and should delight any true DD fan.
A 50-minute documentary, Men Without Fear,
features interviews with Stan "The Man" Lee, John
Romita, Frank Miller, and other artists/writers
on the creation of the character and the comic's
evolution down through the decades. (We get to see
some great examples of different art styles in this.)
The featurette Shadow World Tour compares
how Daredevil's amazing radar sense was depicted
in the comics with its realization in the movie.
(Which, as mentioned above, is perhaps the flick's
most notable achievement.) Disc 2's Film section
cobbles together all the promotional ballyhoo that's
become de rigueur for big Hollywood pictures
these days: an HBO First Look special, various
and sundry 'Making Of' featurettes, trailers, etc.
Worshippers of Jennifer Garner may be intrigued
by the inclusion of her videotaped screen test.
There's also some kind of mult-angle thingee and
some DVD-ROM content, too. Finally, we have three
music videos of songs from the film's soundtrack.
The only one of these of any real interest is the
aforementioned "Bring Me To Life" by Evanesence.
(So I've got a thing for cute goth-looking chicks,
okay?) 8/07/03 |
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