Daredevil

In 2003, Marvel was enjoying the beginning of it movie golden age. X-Men and Spider-Man were huge hits, and even the R-rated Blade franchise had made two successful movies. So Marvel decided to have a go with another popular character, Daredevil. Mark Steven Johnson was the director, Ben Affleck played the lead, Jennifer Garner (Affleck's real-life wife) played his girlfriend, Elektra, Michael Clarke Duncan played the notorious Kingpin, and Colin Farrell played the second villain, Bullseye.

Now, I've never really enjoyed Daredevil. I've read a few of his comics, but they always seemed to dark and too similar to Batman. I kinda always felt that the Daredevil creators were just people who wanted to work on Batman, but weren't allowed to. But I think the similarities to Batman did help this movie, which came out before Batman Begins — the public consciousness demands quality Batman films, and anything that approximates it will do well. And Daredevil did do well — earning $179 million off its $79 million budget. It is interesting to note though, that once Christopher Nolan made his first Batman movie, Daredevil dropped off the face of the Earth. But getting back to the dark aspect of this character, I was glad that this movie came with a PG-13 rating. It could have easily been rated R — and there is an R-rated director's cut on Blu-Ray — but I personally believe that all superhero movies should be PG-13. For this review, I only watched the PG-13 version.

Overall, I have to say I enjoyed this beginning. A young Matt Murdock, who fights for his father's honor, gets blinded immediately after he sees his dad working for the mob. And the part with him waking up in the hospital to his newly-heightened senses was nice, as well. And I particularly enjoyed this Stan Lee cameo. The blind Matt stops him from crossing the street, saving the prolific comic creator. I like the symbolism here: Stan Lee is saved and supported by his creations — not the other way around. Because while Stan the Man did technically create most of the Marvel staples, many of them did not become popular until another writer took over. And Daredevil was one such character who never did anything until Frank Miller started writing him. And Frank Miller also makes a cameo in this movie as one of Bullseye's victims. And another popular Daredevil writer, Kevin Smith, even got a speaking role as a nerdy lab assistant. Plus, every boxer Matt's dad fought had the name of a Daredevil writer or artist. It's kind of cool to have all these cameos when you recognize them, but it's also kind of distracting.

The movie takes its first major dive very shortly after the Stan Lee appearance. Blind Matt is again cornered by his local bullies, who decide to make fun of the kid now that he's blind. Seriously? You're picking on the blind kid? What next, are you going to toss him and his puppy into the ocean? But anyway, they challenge Matt to a fight, and he accepts. First he lightly taps one of them on the face with his walking stick, and one of them immediately freaks out and runs away screaming. But he also receives the unrelenting fury of Matt's light taps. Then Matt randomly does a backflip to kick the last bully in the chin. What? I know he just said his sense of touch was increased, but that doesn't mean he can instantly do backflips!

So Matt's dad was an aging boxer who worked for the mob. But after Matt's accident, he decided to go clean and focus on his boxing career. He then went on a huge win streak, and was even the featured fighter on the marquee. But then one day, his old mob buddies told him that all his past fights were rigged, and now it's time for him to throw the fight. First of all, wouldn't the mob make more money if the aging star kept beating the odds and continued to win? And secondly, why didn't the mob care that he stopped working for them? It seems like that should have been a bigger deal, but they specifically say several times throughout this movie that Jack Murdock was killed only because he refused to throw the fight. Lame!

We now cut forward to an adult Matt Murdock, who is a lawyer trying to defend a rape victim. But the alleged rapist is one of Kingpin's men, and has a high-priced lawyer, who basically kicks Matt's butt in court. I would have liked our hero to be a little more competent in the courtroom. But all he really does here is tell the guy, "I hope justice is found here today before justice finds you." That's a neat line, but it would have worked a whole lot better had Murdock been going up against a corrupt judge, instead of a more qualified, high-priced lawyer.

Keeping true to his word, Murdock follows this alleged rapist as the vigilante Daredevil. But instead of cornering this guy alone in a dark alley, Daredevil waits until he's in a bar surrounded by tons and tons of people. Naturally, Daredevil has to beat the crap out of every single one of them before he gets to the one guy he wants. And it takes forever. Sure, the action's OK, it just felt unnecessary. Finally, Daredevil corners his man in the subway tunnel, which is empty, since it's the middle of the night. Daredevil briefly loses his grip, when the very loud passing of a train startles him. But he quickly rebounds, and throws the guy onto the tracks, cracking his back. Then, two seconds later, another train comes by, killing the scumbag. Two things: First, subway trains do not run in such quick succession of each other, especially at the middle of the night. There would be at least a half-hour delay between the trains, if not longer. Second, superheroes are not supposed to kill! Yes, I know this guy raped a girl, which is very, very, very wrong. But I don't think he should be killed for it. He only got free because Murdock got outworked and outclassed by a better lawyer in the courtroom. Just because you lost the case doesn't give you the right to go out and kill people! Maybe instead of making elaborate costumes and weapons, you should be studying your brail law books more. But then, that would make for a very boring movie, now wouldn't it?

But there is a bright point in this movie in the form of Murdock's trusty, yet bumbling partner, Foggy, played by the always fun Jon Favreau. I've only seen a few movies with Favreau, but I've liked all of them, especially the Iron Man ones he also directed. Technically speaking, this movie was produced by Fox and is not in the same universe as the Avengers Marvel universe. But I like to pretend that Foggy decided to leave Murdock at the end of this movie, and go work for Tony Stark under the name Happy. Regardless, I really liked Foggy's humor here and his fun relationship with Murdock. From arguing about alligators in the sewers to sneaking mustard into each other's coffee, it's all fun and absolutely needed in such a dark and serious movie.

However, as much as I love Foggy, I hate Elektra even more. Right from the get-go, I just wanted to smack her. She enters the coffee shop, takes about two sips, and decides to leave as soon as Murdock starts hitting on her. He grabs her arm, and she coldly says, "I don't like being touched." He then follows her to a park and the two immediately engage in a very long and dull martial arts fight. To tell us, the audience, that this fight is exciting, they brought in a bunch of kids to cheer them on. Maybe this fight would have worked had they cast someone else as Elektra, because Jennifer Garner never comes across as someone tough enough to pull all those moves. Sure she's pretty, but she's probably too pretty. She at least shows way too much cleavage, especially for someone who wants to become a vigilante in high heels herself. The whole movie, I was looking for something, anything, that would warrant this Elektra getting her own sequel, and I didn't see anything. I'm already dreading reviewing that movie.

Now we finally get to a character I know and love — Kingpin. He was a legendary force on the '90s Spider-Man cartoon, running all organized crime in New York, commissioning crazy robots to take down the web-slinger, and even uniting the Sinister Six. And lest you think he's just a big fat guy, he even got into a couple of fights with ol' Spidey, tossing him around like a rag doll. He quite possibly is my favorite Spider-Man villain. But then Marvel decided to give him to Daredevil because he doesn't have enough good villains, and Spider-Man has plenty. That bugged me 10 years ago, as did making Kingpin black. But now, it doesn't bother me at all, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Michael Clarke Duncan's portrayal here. No, he wasn't as big as Kingpin in the comics, but he was about as big as they could make him in a movie. Duncan was naturally a very large man, and they helped add to that by constantly putting a really short guy right next to him. And overall, Kingpin in this movie was everything I'd want him to be — vicious, calculating, and always in control of the situation. And then this movie added the fun aspect of Kingpin giving each of his victims a single rose. It was fun. Sadly, Michael Clarke Duncan died of a heart attack at age 54.


The second villain in this movie was surprisingly likable. Colin Farrell as Bullseye was absolutely crazy, which made him kind of fun. His best scene was on the airplane next to a talkative grandma. He flicked a peanut off the seat and into her windpipe, quietly choking her so people just thought she fell asleep. We've all been there, and we've all secretly wanted to do something like that. However, I was really sad that Bullseye never got a proper costume, especially after he specifically asked for one. Daredevil has a nice costume, why not Bullseye?

I do have to take points off for the obligatory and ultimately unnecessary sex scene with Daredevil and Elektra. They easily could have shown a lot loss and still gotten the point across. Also, it seemed to totally come out of the blue. These two haven't even been on a date, unless you count that "fight" in the park. All in all, it was just in poor taste.

What's worse than watching Elektra try to fight? Watching Elektra try to shoot a gun. In an extremely pivotal, yet stupid scene, Bullseye kills Elektra's dad with Daredevil's stick. I don't know how that stick managed to go into that man's chest — it didn't seem particularly sharp — but that's beside the point. For some reason, Elektra didn't see Bullseye, but she did see Daredevil and instantly assumed he killed her dad. She randomly picks up a gun that just happens to be there, and opens fire on Daredevil, just holding the gun in one hand and looking exactly like someone who'd never fired a gun would look. It was unbearable.

Speaking of unbearable fight scenes, let's skip ahead to Daredevil's big fight with Bullseye in the church. It started off alright, but then more and more CGI came into play as these two began scaling the massive organ. And then the worst effect was when Bullseye caught a bunch of shards of glass to throw at Daredevil. This movie is 10 years old, and CGI does not age well. Also, what was with all the bats that randomly flew out of the organ? I know you guys wanted to do Batman, but you couldn't, so stop pretending this is Batman!

So to recap, in the space of maybe one hour, Elektra fights Daredevil and stabs him pretty bad in the shoulder. Bullseye then shows up and kills her, so Daredevil fights him for a long time, finally tossing him out of a window and onto a moving car. Immediately after this, an injured and exhausted Daredevil decides to go take on the Kingpin. You really had to do it right then and there? Luckily for him, Kingpin called off all his guards so he could fight the Man Without Fear by himself.

Now, this is supposed to be the big, ultimate final fight. But it really wasn't much of a fight at all. This is exactly what happens: Kingpin grabs Daredevil and throws him up against the ceiling. He then picks him up and throws him across the room. He then stops to smell a rose and taunts the hero a bit, before wisely removing his mask. Upon seeing the blind lawyer, Kingpin starts laughing, and then Daredevil breaks open a water pipe that conveniently happens to be right next to him. All the water splashing around helps Daredevil "see" his enemy, and he slides between his legs and kicks out his kneecaps. He then refuses to kill the Kingpin, saying he's not the bad guy. This makes no sense, because we've already seen Daredevil kill at least one man and attempt to kill Bullseye — he miraculously survived his huge fall, but really should have died. Kingpin is kneeling on the ground laughing, saying he'll reveal Daredevil's identity to the world. Daredevil says, "Go ahead. Tell everyone you got beat by a blind man." Guess what, Daredevil? Kingpin's not going to care about that! If you let him live, he will find a way to kill you, even from behind bars. And since we didn't get a Daredevil sequel, I'm going to pretend that was what happened. Kingpin still has tons of connections, and one day, he'll get a special visitor. Kingpin will give him a small note, and a couple of hours later, Matt Murdock will get shot by a sniper between the eyes. It's not a good sign when fans start fantasizing about the main character's death.

So yeah, that was Daredevil. Nowhere near as good as it could have been, but definitely not the worst movie I've ever seen. It was, however, bad enough to make Ben Affleck swear off superheroes. Hence, the next movie in this series stars Elektra and not Daredevil. Luckily, Fox has now relinquished the Daredevil movie rights back to Marvel, so now there's a possibility he could be included in their ever-growing movie universe. And, as everybody knows by now, Affleck has recently lifted his ban on superheroes. But he's not going to be playing any superhero — he's going to play THE superhero in Batman. In Daredevil, I thought he was alright. Not particularly good, but not awful like Jennifer Garner was as Elektra. With a good script, I think Affleck could make a great Batman.

Final score: 1