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DAREDEVIL
Directed by Mark Steven Johnson
I try to enjoy every film I watch. I really do. So I went into DAREDEVIL expecting to have a blast. I knew it would not be great, but I thought that it would be fun to watch, a guilty pleasure if you will. But there was a point where I gave up all hope and started paying more attention to my watch than to what was happening on the screen.
We are treated to the shortest back-story possible (gotta have more time for those terrible action scenes!), where in about 3 minutes of screen-time we see Matt Murdock (a hammy as usual Ben Affleck) as a kid getting blinded by a chemical accident, learning that his other senses are much more heightened, becoming fearless, and witnessing his father’s death at the hands of the Mafia. SPIDER-MAN, a much better although still not great super hero film, was superior because nearly half of the film is back-story and it at least attempts to make us care about the characters it presents. DAREDEVIL wants to plunge us into its action scenes, which lack any suspense or excitement because we simply do not care.
Murdock is a prosecuting lawyer by day, trying to put the scum of the earth in prison. Early on in the film when he tries to get a rapist convicted and is failed by the justice system, he waits until night to don his awkward-looking leather uniform, complete with horns on the top of the head. He dives from the top of his apartment building, using fire escapes to manage his way down, about ten stories at a time. Apparently, because he has heightened senses, he can jump down about a hundred feet at a time and land with ease. After he finishes hopping down the building and finds his target, we get to see an action scene that was more annoying than exciting. Maybe it was the strobe light, or maybe it was the incoherent editing, but the only time I could tell what was going on was when our hero is the only man left standing at the end of the scene.
The rest of the film is about a mob boss named Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan) who killed Matt’s father, Bullseye (Colin Farrell, the only good thing about this film, in a delightfully over-the-top performance), an assassin hired by Kingpin to kill Daredevil, the woman he has fallen in love with, Elektra (Jennifer Garner) and her father, and Daredevil’s attempts to stop them. None of this is ever compelling, or in the least bit interesting, sans a few scenes with Bullseye.
There is a scene to supplement the aforementioned love story where Matt and Elektra are standing on the top of an apartment building. As it begins to rain, the sound of the drops hitting Elektra make a picture for Matt. His heightened senses have given him a form of sonar, so he can essentially see. A blind super hero that can see... you cannot get much worse than that.
My Rating: 1/2*
Review by Jared Mills
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