When I think back to the Daredevil comics I read in my childhood, I remember that they were somehow less interesting than they should have been. The premise was undeniably cool—the idea of a man’s blindness giving him superhuman sensory powers was original, and it provided the ultimate cover for his secret identity as a crusading lawyer in Hell’s Kitchen—but there was always something lacking compared to other comics like Spider-Man. In that respect, at least, the Daredevil film is just like the comic.
Like its two most obvious influences—Tim Burton’s Batman and Alex Proyas’s The Crow—the film wants to be a dark superhero story for adults, the kind of thing that takes place in a crime-ridden dystopia where the sun never seems to shine, and where the hero is a costumed variation on the flawed detective of film noir. Unfortunately, those movies are both tough acts to follow, even without the added pressure from a more recent superhero flick—Sam Raimi’s spectacular Spider-Man. To make matters worse, Daredevil bears all the scars of studio tampering. But if you can see through the heavy editing, watered-down script and of-the-moment cast, just enough remains to make for a moderately entertaining movie.
Ben Affleck stars as Matt Murdock, the titular “Man Without Fear.” Blinded in his youth by a freak accident, Murdock finds that his other four senses have overcompensated, to the point that he can “see” by using a kind of sonar. (The sonar effect of rain makes a human face look like a pointillist painting to him.) Spurred on by a need to avenge his prizefighter father, he spends his days as a lawyer defending wrongly accused clients, and his nights as the incredibly agile, billy-club-wielding Daredevil.
If you can suspend enough disbelief to watch Affleck jump around New York rooftops in a padded red leather suit complete with little horns on the facemask, you might be able to stay in your seat when you see the villainous hitman Bullseye (Colin Farrell), a marksman with a target tattooed to his forehead. He can throw anything with deadly accuracy, from daggers to paper clips. (In one particularly ridiculous scene, he collects shards of falling glass and flings them at Daredevil like a machine gun.) You’ll have a far easier time buying Alias’s Jennifer Garner as Elektra Natchios, Daredevil’s love interest-slash-sparring partner, if only because Garner’s improbably hard body needs no padding to enhance it. But the most daring casting choice is Michael Clarke Duncan as Daredevil’s nemesis, the Kingpin of Crime. The moment you hear his subterranean voice and see how he looks in an expensive suit, you’ll forget all about the fact that the Kingpin is a white guy in the comics. If the filmmakers had shown equal fearlessness in making something other than a bland crowd-pleaser, Daredevil might have given Spider-Man a real challenge. As it is, it’s no contest.
(2.5/4)