The SmarK DVD Rant for Daredevil
The blitz of Marvel movies following on the heels of Spider-Man has made it clear that “strike while the iron is hot” is a phrase much beloved in Hollywood, or at least in the boardrooms of major studios. Unfortunately, once you get past the big guns of Marvel, you get a pretty serious dropoff of potential blockbusters — Daredevil (essentially a Batman ripoff) had never struck me as a story that could lend itself well to telling on the big screen. And I was mostly right.
The Film
Just to make it clear, coming into the movie I expected complete dogshit, based on the trailer and the idea of Ben Affleck playing a tortured soul. It was certainly better than dogshit, I’ll give it that.
In fact, there’s a moment — about 20 seconds long — in the second act, where a better movie is about to break out of the vinyl-costume and clichéd-dialogue mold of this movie, but never quite gets there. It’s where Daredevil returns from a night of daring and devilishness, and he gets dumped by his girlfriend over the phone, and then takes off his costume to reveal a multitude of scars and an addiction to prescription painkillers, before sinking into a sensory depravation tank to escape the pain of everyday sounds assaulting his ears. The story of an ordinary guy who pushes himself too hard to compete with the superheroics expected of costumed crimefighters and pays the price with a self-destructing body and life? Now THERE’S a superhero movie that I can sink my teeth into. Unfortunately, he goes right back to defying the laws of physics 10 minutes later and the moment is never brushed on again.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Daredevil is the story of Matt Murdock, who had toxic waste spilled on his eyes as a young man and lost his sight, but gained freakish mutant senses to compensate. Not quite the inspiration to the blind you’d like, but it’s comic books so what can ya do? Anyway, Matt’s father is a washed-up boxer who gets tangled up with the crime overlord known only as the Kingpin in order to make ends meet. Unfortunately, he refuses to take a dive at the right time, and gets killed for it. Matt is pissed, and swears revenge, vowing to fight against the forces of evil by becoming a lawyer? Geez, might as well just give up that fight right out of the gates. Even worse, he’s a pro bono lawyer who gets paid in fish and sporting goods, and doesn’t seem to win many cases. This raises the question of how he can afford endless Daredevil outfits and gallons of Percocet, but maybe he just bought the drugs from Lex Luger, who knows.
Showing the kind of disregard for the legal system that any bar association would vomit at, when he loses a case against an accused rapist by day, he changes to Daredevil by night and not only hunts him down and kills him, but about 40 of his closest friends in a nearby bar. Note to Murdock: Not sure if you skipped that day in law class, but murder is a lot worse than rape.
Ah, but love soon walks into his life, in the form of Elektra (played by the simply ravishing Jennifer Garner), and after a Meet Cute in the coffee house, they proceed to head out to the playground for that staple of every romantic comedy, the Matrix-styled karate fight. He may be blind, but his wire-fighting still works just fine.
Now, Matt is blind, but his hearing is so acute that everyday objects vibrate and give him a kind of radar, which in a neat touch allows him to “see” more clearly when it’s raining. Obviously he should then move to Seattle and fight crime there. But no, he uses it to score with Elektra instead. I’m going with Matt’s judgment call on that one.
Elektra’s father is very Greek and very rich, and has unspecified dealings with the Kingpin, but he wants out. What are those dealings and why does he want out? Well, it’s only a 90 minute superhero movie, so we never quite know or care, but rest assured that this puts him in grave danger. In fact, Kingpin hires Irish hitman Bullseye to do the deed for him, who gets the call while murdering a pub owner in cold blood in front of dozens of witnesses. You’d think someone would call and say “Hey, it was the guy WITH THE BULLSEYE TATTOOED ON HIS HEAD”, but again, it’s only a 90 minute movie. Bullseye’s superpower is being able to throw anything at anything and never miss, including the mysterious ability to throw objects so hard that they not only fly perfectly straight, but penetrate bone despite not having a point on them. Which begs the question: Why bother being a supervillain when there’s so much more money to be made as a professional darts player?
So anyway, things start to get rushed around this point, as Bullseye kills Elektra’s father, and he fights with Daredevil, and Daredevil fights with Elektra, and Elektra fights with Bullseye, and Bullseye fights with Daredevil again, and Daredevil finally fights with Kingpin to end the movie, as Michael Clarke Duncan’s part basically amounts to looking menacing every 10 minutes and then getting his ass kicked by a blind guy. And that’s pretty much it — this isn’t a movie that’s big on the “stop and let people think” aspect of storytelling, as the third act testifies to. It might lead people to stop and wonder why he’d brutally slaughter a bunch of minor thugs early in the movie and then suddenly gain a conscience — other than a little kid crying in fear when he walks by. SURE you’re not the bad guy, says the dude in the SATANIC COSTUME hunting down criminals in the night.
But that’s not to say it’s a bad movie. As superhero movies go, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable little 103 minute CGI romp, all the way up until Kingpin says “I’ll be coming after you” and the entire audience can recite “I’ll be waiting” as Daredevil’s clever retort. Geez, someone get this guy the Braille version of “Snappy one-liners for action heroes, first edition”. But as a guy who has sat through “Commando” close to 18 times, I can deal with bad dialogue. Maybe movies like X-Men and Spider-Man have spoiled me as of late by raising the bar of effective use of dialogue and creating actual characters instead of cardboard cutouts (I mean, seriously, you could have deleted both Jon Favreau and Joe Pantoliano from the movie and freed up 10 minutes for an Elektra shower scene!), but Daredevil felt like the kind of movie they were making in the early 90s, like the Dolph Lundgren version of the Punisher or something. So basically, as action movies go, it’s fine, but there were little twinges of greatness here, and I’m just disappointed that they were too busy ripping off the Matrix and working in songs from the soundtrack CD to follow up that thread instead of whatever it ended up being about. I can’t go out of my way to recommend it, but it has enough charming features and cool effects that it’s worth a rental, if nothing else.
The Video:
This is a very dark movie (stylistically and lighting-wise), and the DVD handles it very well, taking all the blacks and reds in stride without any sign of compression problems. I found the contrast to be a bit off — the darks were a little too dark, while the light portions looked fine — but that might be my TV, as I recently got a new one and I’m still working out the kinks of adjusting all the settings to my liking. Basically, a stellar transfer, as most movies seem to be these days.
The Audio:
You get your choice of Dolby 5.1 or DTS, and I think you know by now where my heart lies. This is where the DVD really excels, because the DTS mix gives you some SWANK usage of surrounds and the digital audio experience in general when the movie switches to Matt’s viewpoint, and you get to hear the world as he does. Other than that, a solid action movie mix (with the soundtrack songs mixed lower than I remember in the theatre for some reason, especially “Bring Me To Life” and the Seether song early in the movie) that’s never quiet for too long.
The Extras:
Where the movie might be lacking in substance, the extras more than make up for in sheer over-the-top enthusiasm. This is a two-disc set, and even the first disc would have made a decent special edition.
Disc One — You get a commentary from the director and producer, as well as the oh-so-popular text commentary which I love, and the “enhanced viewing mode” which I hate. Call it a draw.
Disc Two — Tons of stuff here, divided into two sections for ease of viewing. The first section deals with the comics, and you get an hour-long documentary that’s a fanboy’s dream — interviews with everyone involved in the comics from day one, covering Stan Lee through Kevin Smith, and it’s all really cool stuff. You also get a quickie featurette on the world of Daredevil as compared to the comics that’s less cool.
The other section deals with the movie itself, featuring yet another hour-long documentary that’s more of a straight behind-the-scenes deal, and a really good one at that. It’s also offered with the “enhanced viewing mode”, (i.e., stop and hit “enter” every few minutes to view a related featurette in order to annoy the viewer), and pretty much covers all the aspects of the movie. No deleted scenes, so I guess it was a really tightly-shot production.
There’s a few more fluff pieces (like a “featured villain” spotlight on Kingpin that’s really just a quick interview with Michael Clarke Duncan), as well as three music videos (Fuel baby! Whoo!) and theatrical trailers. Another cool feature is focused on Tom Sullivan, the blind consultant for the movie who provided insight into how Murdock would live and stuff. I guess any praise is wasted on him, because, you know well anyway, it’s a cool feature nonetheless. Also you get Jennifer Garner’s screen-test, and a couple of multi-angle screen thingies that still aren’t as good as Speed’s.
Packed disc, y’all.
The Ratings:
The Film: **1/2
The Video: ****1/2
The Audio: *****
The Extras: *****
