DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER
Mark
Steven Johnson
based on characters
created by
Bill
Everett
Stan Lee
Frank Miller
PRODUCERS
Avi Arad
Gary Foster
Arnon Milchan
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Ericson Core
MUSIC
Graeme Revell
EDITORS
Armen Minasian
Dennis Virkler
CAST
Ben Affleck (Matt Murdock/Daredevil)
Jennifer Garner (Elektra Natchios)
Michael Clarke Duncan (The Kingpin)
Colin Farrell (Bullseye)
Jon Favreau (Foggy Nelson)
Joe Pantoliano (Ben Urich)
David Keith (Jack Murdock)
Scott Terra (Young Matt)
Erick Avari (Ambassador Natchios)
Leland Orser (Wesley)
Ellen Pompeo (Karen Page)
Kevin Smith (Jack Kirby, Lab Assistant)
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running
time: 102m
U.S. release: February 14, 2003
Video availability: TBA
Official
website
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For a while there in the '80s,
Frank Miller halfway legitimized men in tights. His magnum
opus was 1986's famous Batman: The Dark Knight Returns,
but the work that first got him noticed was his run on Daredevil.
Bringing his obsession with ninjas and film noir street
grit to the blind hero -- noble lawyer Matt Murdock by day, crusading
avenger Daredevil by night -- Miller set the bar higher for flawed,
human comic-book heroes. Among the fans of Miller's run was Mark
Steven Johnson, who has now presented his very own movie version.
The result is a little like a novelization of a damn good movie:
Miller's comics were more cinematic than this piece of Daredevil
cinema.
Blinded by toxic chemicals
as a boy, Matt developed hyperactive senses to compensate: he
can smell the perfume of a woman from fifty feet away through
a wall, he can tell if you're lying by listening to your heartbeat
(an asset in court). This hero's journey begins as so many other
heroes' journeys do, with the death of the father (David Keith,
who gives Matt's broken-down boxer dad some rumpled pathos).
Somewhere along the line, Matt fashions himself a fabulous red
leather outfit and becomes Daredevil, beating the tar out of
criminals that the law can't touch. Johnson does a serviceable
job of piling this and much more exposition into the movie, though
it doesn't leave room for much else.
Matt's (and Daredevil's) emotional
downfall comes in the shape of Jennifer Garner, as Elektra, a
Greek ambassador's daughter intimate with martial arts and ninja
weaponry. They don't make a terribly electric pair here; Affleck
gives a pained and conflicted performance -- and you can take
"pained" literally; Matt munches Percocets and other
painkillers after a hard night on the town -- but Garner is athletic
and robust, a bouncy jock girl, where she needs to be sullen
and exotic. The let's-capitalize-on-Alias casting is a
mistake.
If anyone emerges from Daredevil
as a sex symbol, it won't be the latex-clad Affleck or Garner
-- it's more likely to be Colin Farrell as Bullseye, a loose-cannon
Irish assassin hired by the city's crime lord the Kingpin (Michael
Clarke Duncan, doing more of his jocular basso-profundo
thing) to bump off Elektra. Throwing his arms out in an arrogant
worship-me pose, Farrell's Bullseye is always playing to a wildly
appreciative audience in his head. Watching him, I was struck
anew by the thought that the villains in Hollywood movies know
themselves far better than the heroes know themselves; not sicklied
o'er with the pale cast of thought, Bullseye is free to run amok
with implements ranging from a paper clip to a peanut, and Farrell
gives a large-scale performance in what's really, in terms of
screen time, a tiny supporting role.
Daredevil has some of the same problems as last
year's lighter-than-air Spider-Man.
In both, CGI figures do most of the hoofing, and you can see
why in one unfortunate shot of Ben Affleck attempting to run
in his head-to-toe leather. If Daredevil is a man without fear,
Johnson is sometimes a director without shame: It's been a very
long time since I last saw the camera pan away from lovers to
a roaring fireplace. Yet Johnson adds some fine touches: Matt
sleeping in a sensory-deprivation tank; raindrops dappling Elektra's
skin so that Matt, with his super-auditory "radar"
sense, can "see" her. The first living thing we see
onscreen is a rat, making it clear that this isn't the well-scrubbed
Manhattan that Peter Parker swung through. Whenever possible,
Johnson sticks close to Frank Miller's hard-boiled tone, and
he stages a key confrontation between Bullseye and Elektra that's
note-for-note out of the pages of Miller.
I enjoyed Daredevil
while it lasted, but except for Farrell and some amusing bits
from Jon Favreau as Matt's portly legal partner Foggy Nelson,
very little of it has stayed with me. The fights are your standard
quick-cut unscannable fare -- God forbid we should see how exactly
Affleck or Garner manage to raise their legs more than two inches
off the ground in their crinkly latex -- and the last half of
the movie seems to be devoted to them. Also, I wasn't aware that
having augmented senses of smell and hearing enables you to dive
hundreds of feet down the side of a building and then land on
an iron balcony without causing your legs to telescope into your
stomach. These comic-book movies forget that we'll buy things
in comic books that we can't buy in live action. A movie that
has the wherewithal to show Matt popping Demerols should also
at least gesture in the general direction of the laws of physics.
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