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Daredevil is based on a long-running, popular comic book. Ben Affleck stars as the troubled, vengeful hero while Jennifer Garner (TV’s Alias) plays the combative beauty who falls in love with him. Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile) and Colin Farrell (The Recruit) get their shot at playing wild and crazy villains. And 2002 has its first of "many comic-book movies."

Hopefully, things will get better as the year goes on.

Daredevil follows the classic structure of a superhero story, from Peter Parker to Harry Potter: A young hero suffers a grievous blow in his childhood that motivates him to spend his life fighting evil, using special abilities he has conveniently acquired by accident or some secret inheritance.

In a solidly built first act, we are introduced to young Matt Murdock and his father, a troubled prizefighter who wants his son to have a better life. By the time the young boy has grown to become a handsome and melancholy lawyer, Matt has picked up a heart-ful of motivating childhood traumas: the realization of his father's criminal past, the subsequent murder of his father, and his own loss of eyesight in a tragic toxic accident. As much angst as the X-Men, all in the heart of the People's Sexiest Man of the Year, clad in a red leather jumpsuit.

You might think that Daredevil would be a favorite hero of blind kids, but Murdock isn't really blind. He just sees with his ears. The film gives us a nifty special effect, representing the radar-like sense of hearing by giving vague, swirling dances of light on a dark canvas, waves that reveal only the edges of things, like silver showers of digital rain. Thus he can't just see... he can see through things, and find the gunman hiding on the other side of a wall. This effect is at first wonderfully employed by the special-effects team, but soon it starts including too much information, like the sparkle in a pretty girl's eye, things that could not be communicated by sound. My pity for poor Murdock quickly dwindled. This "sound-effect" becomes less and less plausible as the film goes on, to the point that he can hear dozens of bullets or blades coming at him at once, and he is somehow quick enough to dodge them. Thus, the special-effects team are able to include the most over-used visual effect of the millennium: that Matrix-like shot of the hero going sideways in slow motion to miraculous writhe his way through a wall of flying objects. Spider-man's burglary of that effect was, for me, one of that film's missteps, and here it's worse.

Thus, Murdock comes complete with a complex, confusing jumble of arbitrary super-talents, and a costume. The costume isn't explained either, nor is the fact that, like Spider-man and Batman, he can leap from one tall building to the other, crash down on violent gangs in dark alleys, and defeat them single-handedly. He's more Batman than Spidey--he works at night, chasing down bad guys who escaped justice in the courtroom.

Yep, that is the "heroic" method of this Daredevil. If a crook escapes courtroom justice, throw him down on some train tracks and let the "C" Train run him over! Within the first 30 minutes of the film, Daredevil has chased down and murdered a vigilante rapist. While he seems to learn a little better later in the film, these acts do not much bother him. His conscience pricks him just enough to drive him into a Catholic church. When Affleck stumbled into a church in Changing Lanes, it prompted some real soul-searching. But for Murdock, it's just an excuse to let the camera settle on religious imagery, lending the film some vague spiritual self-importance. Daredevil just shakes it off and marches back out to kick some criminal butt. The message seems to be, “If you can’t get it done in the courtroom, don’t leave vengeance in God’s hands. Go deal out death and judgment yourself.”

He's also not above using his blindness to earn the sympathy of gorgeous babes. In this episode, his chosen target is Elektra Natchios (Garner), who just happens to be a spectacular martial arts “warrior.” Boy, he knows how to pick 'em! The arbitrariness of their meeting is only one of several severe blows to our suspension of disbelief. But an even bigger shock is the revelation that Murdock is comfortable demonstrating his talents in broad daylight in front of crowds of people while still wearing his average joe clothes! (Another thing we must accept about the New York of Daredevil... everyone has recurring amnesia.) 

Of course, it's a small world, so Elektra's father must have ties to the real villain so that her relationship with Murdock will be tested as quickly and intensely as it sparks into love. And how quickly it sparks into love! They meet, they fight, they tumble in the sheets. If this guy has any opportunity as a role model for young fans, he's missing them all.

The relationship between Murdock and Elektra could have made for an interesting film. We catch a glimpse of what might have been in the film's strongest scene: Matt and Elektra's playful "first date" sparring match on a bunch of playground equipment. For a few moments, the camera lets us enjoy the fact that Garner is doing her own stunts, and I found myself hoping that the movie was turning a corner.

Alas, it was peaking, and heading into a quick descent. To let us enjoy more of the potential chemistry between these two would have been to depart from the formula. Here we are, a third of the way through the picture, and we still know next to nothing about the Bad Guys! So we are hurriedly acquainted with two one-dimensional villains: There's the typical dignified, rich, powerful bad guy that's behind the crime--Kingpin (the formidable Michael Clarke Duncan). And then there's the typically psychopathic, hyperviolent bad guy--Bullseye (Colin Farrell, finally allowed to use his Irish accent, thank goodness!) What follows is a disappointingly routine series of showdowns, made interesting only by Farrell's thoroughly convincing portrayal of a darts-champion-turned-drunkard.

Okay, okay... It’s not a total bust. Writer/director Michael Steven Johnson choreographs spirited and stylish fight scenes, and he draws admirable energy and emotion from the actors. There is a lot of creativity at work in the violent conflicts, if not elsewhere. Bullseye earns laughs through his love of pincushioning his opponents with an impressive array of everyday objects. And comic fans will have a blast with the cameos and clever mentions of Daredevil's artists and writers.

But while Johnson has assembled an impressive cast, they only look good when they’re real. Daredevil’s digital clone looks great jumping around in the dark, but get him in even dim light and he seems completely artificial.

Worse, Murdock is the only character we get to know; Elektra is too busy showing off her combat abilities to let us learn anything about her. (And that is a shame. Jennifer Garner proves in every episode of TV’s Alias that she has remarkable range as an actress—she’s not just another pretty face.) The villains suffer from this rapid pace as well. We never learn who Kingpin is, where he came from, what motivates him to be so bad. Bullseye is zany, but he's a generic baddie with a token talent, and I have no desire to see him somehow resurrected in another episode the way I long for the return of Catwoman or Unbreakable's Mr. Glass. 

Further, with the exception of Murdock's banter with his oblivious buddy "Foggy" (John Favreau), no one has any interesting lines. The dialogue is overstuffed with clichéd one-liners, frequently interrupted by annoyingly pretentious voice-over narration, loaded with lines like "Can one man truly make a difference? Sometimes I have faith...." (Or something like that.) Playing a newsman, poor Joe Pantoliano has, for the first time in his wonderful career, a flat, boring character with nothing to say. That's a shame for an actor who proved he could make an impression long before The Matrix made him "cool." (Why has everyone forgotten the great _Midnight Run_?)

It should come as no surprise that Johnson is also the man responsible for the catastrophic Christmas movie Jack Frost,  as well as Grumpier Old Men and the disappointing adaptation of A Prayer for Owen Meany--Simon Birch. (His co-writer is Brian Helgeland, who wrote L.A. Confidential...but then again he also gave us A Knight's Tale and Payback.) 

But the script is not Daredevil's biggest problem. Somebody decided to forego a traditional soundtrack and use a hit parade of blaring, obnoxious alt-rock songs with infantile lyrics. It assaults the audience at every turn so that we never have a chance to catch our breath or think about the plight of our characters. It's like watching a movie at the drive-in while the jerk in the Trans Am next to you plays Rob Zombie at full volume.

I'm reminded of the way Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron turned a breathtaking feat of technique into a flood of smelly sentimentality, drenched in the pretentious voice-over of Affleck's buddy Matt Damon and the overbearing anthems of Bryan Adams.

I went in with an appetite for comic-book antics, and came away hungry. You might have the best plate of pancakes in town, but if you pour bad syrup over them, you've just made yourself a plate of bad pancakes. Daredevil's soundtrack and speechifying are bad syrup. But in this case, the pancakes--the story and its characters--weren't anything special to begin with.

Jeffrey Overstreet 

In the world of comic book heroes coming to the silver screen, Ben Affleck's version of Daredevil, the blind attorney-turned-vigilante, takes a step backward. Affleck has a nasal, flat voice that is at odds with his screen character. Granted, the editing is great in handling Affleck and the acrobatic fight scenes. Granted, there is emoting that is handled adequately, but when the actor speaks, super-hero disappears. Affleck has a strong chin, and this shows well under a half-mask, the same as Peter Weller in Robocop. Whereas Weller made Robocop a memorable character, Daredevil is average. This is opposed to Michael Clarke Duncan as the evil Kingpin, who dominates his scenes and dwells on syllables, or Jennifer Garner as the tough-as-the-guys Elektra. Joe Pantoliano has a nasal voice, also, but he adds enough inflection to make the character of an investigative reporter interesting. We'll skip Colin Farrell as the impossibly-manic Bullseye. His dialogue and neck twitching are both incomprehensible. 

If I have left you behind, "Daredevil's" story concerns a young boy, Matt Murdock (Scott Terra), whose father (David Keith) is a prizefighter. Matt is accidentally blinded in a chemical accident, leaving him with greatly heightened senses. Keith is murdered and thus begins Matt's lifelong quest of revenge. He transforms himself not only into a top lawyer, but also a top crime-fighter, dressed in red leather and called "Daredevil." The guy swings through the city like Spider-Man, but without the webs. Enter Jennifer Garner as Elektra, the girl who can match Matt with physical prowess. When Elektra's world begins to fall apart, she and Matt go on different paths. Kingpin is the one to topple, and right behind him, Bullseye (so called because of the bullseye tattooed on his forehead.) Daredevil's lair is apparently in the basement of a cathedral and is protected by the priest. Daredevil crawls around the outside stone like a moving statue.

Graeme Revell's music hits the audience over the head. Alternating between rap and Danny Elfman, my head felt as though it were riding Bulleye's motorcycle. Sometimes less is more. The special effects are fairly well done, especially Daredevil traveling through the city, building-to-building. Jennifer Garner sparkles as Elektra, the girl with sorrow in her life. One highlight of the film is when she and Matt try to out-do each other with martial arts on a children's playground. You may never look at a teeter-totter the same way again. The same with Bulleye and his choice of weapons. Anything, and I mean anything, is a weapon to this guy. Also, don't sit next to him on a plane. How he handles a talkative senior citizen is something for the books.

The dialogue for Daredevil is part of the problem. Nothing out of the ordinary or earth-shaking here, and repetitions of "Get that man," don't make a script. In one section, Daredevil is seriously wounded in the left shoulder, yet manages to scale a wall and fight a serious fight, without so much as a wince. Does red leather have healing powers? At least, in his case, his body is encased with leather, but why is it that every fighting girl wears the least amount of clothing possible? And Elektra's choice of weapons is knives; now there's an untold story for you.

Copyright 2003 Marie Asner
Submitted 2/22/03