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Daredevil's gloomy New York a little too realistic
By BRUCE KIRKLAND -- Toronto Sun
Even in an era when an explosion of comic-book superheroes is hitting the silver screen, Daredevil stands alone.
It is not just that the Daredevil character, created by Stan Lee at Marvel Comics in the 1960s, is a brooding loner, a man fraught with self-doubt over his avenging angel ways: "I'm the good guy," he tells himself as a forlorn mantra while perched gargoyle-like high on a Manhattan spire.
It is not just that the character, who has been blind since a childhood tragedy, is an unlikely superhero in any event because the abuse he endures fighting villains has left him bruised, battle-scarred and wracked with pain.
Instead, the bizarre thing about Daredevil the movie is that Daredevil the superhero -- played with stoic determination by Ben Affleck -- has to work his magic in such a gritty, grim, dark and intensely realistic cityscape. Only the uncanny special effects that allow Daredevil to "see" a face wet with rain or shrouded in smoke are truly fantastical.
Superman had his glossy Metropolis and surreal sites, including his doomed home planet of Krypton, in his 1978 movie. The highly stylized, retro-Forties look of Gotham City served Tim Burton's Batman to perfection in the 1989 movie. X-Men was hyper-real. In Spider-Man, the web-slinger got to soar through an exaggerated New York City that immediately allowed us to willingly suspend our disbelief.
I am less willing to fight the disbelief in Daredevil because this New York is simply New York: A big city with slick skyscrappers sitting cheek-to-jowl with the rat-infested warehouses, bars and back alleys where the crime lord's stooges do their dirty work. And that work includes rape, murder, extortion and other vile aspects of contemporary society.
No wonder Daredevil is so depressed. Even his own lair, a rooftop apartment, is gloomy. That said, Affleck is generally up to the task at hand, even with some dialogue that verges on cheap melodrama. He plays both the Daredevil and his alter ego, the selfless, crusading lawyer Matt Murdock, with an overriding intelligence that allows the metaphors built into all Marvel superheroes to emerge. In his case, he fights evil to atone for the sins of his father, a washed-up boxer (David Keith, seen in a flashback) who went to work for the brutish crimelord Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan).
The film, which was clumsily co-written and methodically directed by Mark Steven Johnson (Simon Birch), delves into Daredevil's comic origins but also goes its own way in telling the movie version of the story, not always to advantage.
EYE CANDY
The filmmakers do score a Bullseye, however, with a drooling, skin-headed, super-psycho Colin Farrell as that villain. He is the scenery-chewing, set-wrecking comic relief.
The eye candy and obligatory romantic interest is provided by foxy Jennifer Garner, who uses kickboxing skills honed on TV's Alias to advantage in the martial-arts fight scenes (although any of the flying babes in Crouching Tiger or the new Oscar-nominated Hero would wipe her off the screen in two seconds flat). Affleck, however, is a rank amateur and should have had a stunt double even as Murdock.
All of this leaves Daredevil as a mixed blessing.
By BRUCE KIRKLAND -- Toronto Sun
Even in an era when an explosion of comic-book superheroes is hitting the silver screen, Daredevil stands alone.
It is not just that the Daredevil character, created by Stan Lee at Marvel Comics in the 1960s, is a brooding loner, a man fraught with self-doubt over his avenging angel ways: "I'm the good guy," he tells himself as a forlorn mantra while perched gargoyle-like high on a Manhattan spire.
It is not just that the character, who has been blind since a childhood tragedy, is an unlikely superhero in any event because the abuse he endures fighting villains has left him bruised, battle-scarred and wracked with pain.
Instead, the bizarre thing about Daredevil the movie is that Daredevil the superhero -- played with stoic determination by Ben Affleck -- has to work his magic in such a gritty, grim, dark and intensely realistic cityscape. Only the uncanny special effects that allow Daredevil to "see" a face wet with rain or shrouded in smoke are truly fantastical.
Superman had his glossy Metropolis and surreal sites, including his doomed home planet of Krypton, in his 1978 movie. The highly stylized, retro-Forties look of Gotham City served Tim Burton's Batman to perfection in the 1989 movie. X-Men was hyper-real. In Spider-Man, the web-slinger got to soar through an exaggerated New York City that immediately allowed us to willingly suspend our disbelief.
I am less willing to fight the disbelief in Daredevil because this New York is simply New York: A big city with slick skyscrappers sitting cheek-to-jowl with the rat-infested warehouses, bars and back alleys where the crime lord's stooges do their dirty work. And that work includes rape, murder, extortion and other vile aspects of contemporary society.
No wonder Daredevil is so depressed. Even his own lair, a rooftop apartment, is gloomy. That said, Affleck is generally up to the task at hand, even with some dialogue that verges on cheap melodrama. He plays both the Daredevil and his alter ego, the selfless, crusading lawyer Matt Murdock, with an overriding intelligence that allows the metaphors built into all Marvel superheroes to emerge. In his case, he fights evil to atone for the sins of his father, a washed-up boxer (David Keith, seen in a flashback) who went to work for the brutish crimelord Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan).
The film, which was clumsily co-written and methodically directed by Mark Steven Johnson (Simon Birch), delves into Daredevil's comic origins but also goes its own way in telling the movie version of the story, not always to advantage.
EYE CANDY
The filmmakers do score a Bullseye, however, with a drooling, skin-headed, super-psycho Colin Farrell as that villain. He is the scenery-chewing, set-wrecking comic relief.
The eye candy and obligatory romantic interest is provided by foxy Jennifer Garner, who uses kickboxing skills honed on TV's Alias to advantage in the martial-arts fight scenes (although any of the flying babes in Crouching Tiger or the new Oscar-nominated Hero would wipe her off the screen in two seconds flat). Affleck, however, is a rank amateur and should have had a stunt double even as Murdock.
All of this leaves Daredevil as a mixed blessing.
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