A little over 20 years ago, in a whole different cinematic era, they made a movie of the Marvel Comics super hero Daredevil. It was a strange, in-between period for comic book movies – they were neither the exciting novelty they’d been in the BATMAN-inspired ‘90s or the dominant cultural force they would soon become with the MCU. BLADE, X-MEN, BLADE II and SPIDER-MAN had come out, so Marvel finally had a track record of successful movie adaptations. But none of these took place in the same world, and there was even a famous outtake from X-MEN where a guy in a Spider-Man costume ran into a scene as a prank, and it seemed hilarious at the time.
DAREDEVIL was a test of what The Ain’t It Cool News and other self-declared “geek” voices on the internet had been preaching. In fact, Harry Knowles wrote a rave review of the script more than a year before filming started. It’s meant to be a dark, gritty and faithful adaptation of a character beloved by comics fans, but not very well known to civilians. Sure enough it was a hit, though only enough to get a spin-off and not multiple sequels like Blade, the X-Men and Spider-Man got.
I always thought it sucked though. I’m not sure why I didn’t review it at the time. I remember people swearing the director’s cut (released on DVD a year later) was great, but I never believed them, because the overall style and tone and vibe were more my issue than anything that could be improved by adding or rearranging scenes. It was not something I had the inclination to revisit.
Until MADAME WEB. That not-good-but-kind-of-amusing off-brand Marvel movie had me nostalgic for the wilderness period of the aughts. It’s set in 2003, so it had me comparing it to the Marvel movies actually released in that year, and I got it into my head I should see how DAREDEVIL plays for me now. Turns out it plays better.
Here is this movie set at night, in a loud, dangerous New York City. Shadowy alleys, steam coming off streets, sirens in the distance, sounds coming from all around, even for those of us without super-powered hearing due to being splashed by barrels of “biological waste” from a truck accident. I was surprised how exciting it felt to see an urban, street level super hero movie again. I guess we haven’t gotten many of those since the rise of the MCU, THE BATMAN being an obvious exception.
But this one has film grain! I’m not saying that sarcastically. The look and feel of the opening drew me in immediately. There’s a kind of laughable CG city, but it can pass for stylized since it’s integrated with the credits, and I like the score by Graeme Revell (THE CROW, MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS: THE MOVIE), which gathers steam until it becomes a loud explosion with the title, then gets quiet and builds again as we move up a model (I think) of a big church to find Daredevil (Ben Affleck right before a run of GIGLI, PAYCHECK, SURVIVING CHRISTMAS and JERSEY GIRL), Christian name Matt Murdock, on the roof holding onto the cross as a police helicopter passes. He lowers himself inside and falls, injured, to the floor, where a priest (Derrick O’Connor, LETHAL WEAPON 2) tries to comfort him as his life flashes before his eyes. He tells us about it in hard boiled narration that’s corny but mostly works.
He grew up in Hell’s Kitchen. As a kid (Scott Terra, EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS) he’s bullied because his boxer dad Jack “The Devil” Murdock (David Keith, WHITE OF THE EYE – great casting) is “a bum,” a former contender who’s now a drunk working for a crime boss named Fallon (Mark Margolis, THE COURIER), kinda like Rocky at the beginning of ROCKY. He tells Matt that’s not true, but when the poor kid sees him on the job he runs away, upset, and causes the accident that blinds and super powers him. Through a training montage (set, I’m afraid, to Hoobastank), Matt learns how to live as a blind person, Jack rededicates himself to a comeback in the ring, and Matt begins to do acrobatics and fight training on top of a building as “the city itself became my playground.”
I’m not sure what the time frame is supposed to be here – surely many months have to have passed, but the bullies run into Matt in an alley and say “Hey Murdock, round 2!” as if their previous scene happened yesterday. That’s the magic of the movies, I guess. If it was following logic they’d be growing mustaches now and not remember who the fuck he is, but cheating allows him to go Zatoichi on their asses.
Fallon orders Jack to throw a fight, but he doesn’t do it, hearing Matt’s encouragement from the crowd, and Fallon has him murdered. So when we cut to Matt now grown up he’s decided to pull a Batman. Or kind of a Blade, actually! His lair is a dank, utilitarian loft full of weapons, and he sleeps in a sensory deprivation tank that looks like a big metal coffin. It is specified that he never brings girlfriends there.
Unlike Batman or Blade he holds down a legitimate day job as a lawyer. His partner Foggy Nelson (Jon Favreau, who had only directed MADE at that point, but in five years would kick off the MCU with IRON MAN) doesn’t seem to share this, but Matt is an idealistic crusader trying to use the system to help the downtrodden. Unfortunately the only thing he seems to have going for him is his ability to detect lies by hearing people’s heartbeats. In the court room he seems to have no idea what the fuck he’s doing, maybe because he’s satisfied with his method of losing every case and then at night putting on his red leather Daredevil costume to hunt down and murder the defendant. Like some sort of punisher. Sometimes he doesn’t even hide his identity – he terrorizes a corrupt cop who lied on the stand by commandeering his BMW and ramming it into parked cars.
Here’s one of the most fun parts of the movie: after spectacularly losing an easy case and making the excuse that “the kingpin” must’ve funded the defense lawyer, Foggy wants to get drunk.
“Not tonight. I got work to do” says Matt, and it zooms into his sunglasses, which then dissolve to a similar shot in the dark with the glasses reflecting his cane extending into a weapon and then a RAMBO-style suiting up sequence followed by spinning of nunchakas and shit. This all seems very BLADE-inspired, and more things should be BLADE-inspired. Then he dives off a building and that part seems like BATMAN FOREVER, except actually cool, in my opinion. It quickly establishes that in this world you can parkour high above a city without Spider-Man powers, and Daredevil can spin and flip off of poles and street lights and things like a gymnast. Straight out of the comics. I love it.
Daredevil finds serial abuser Quesada (Paul Ben-Victor, RED SCORPION 2) celebrating his not guilty verdict at a bar that’s so rowdy bikers ride in and burn rubber next to the stripper cage. The camera floats up to reveal Daredevil crouched high up in the rafters watching Quesada. A thug played by long time Dwayne Johnson stunt double Tanoai Reed happens to notice him up there and points him out. Quesada asks, “Is that guy for real?” and then “Whadda you want?”
Unfortunately Daredevil grunts “JUSTICE!” in the first moment that really made me embarrassed for the movie, but then there’s a fun fight scene where he runs around doing flips, leapfrogging across ceiling fans, running up the cage, sensing bullets enough to dodge them. After eliminating everyone but his target he stands flexing in front of two burning pool tables, sparks spilling from above. I will forgive the soundtrack (apparently the song is by Nickelback) because the dorks who hang out here probly do think that shit is awesome.
I like the energetic style of the camera work – lots of boom shots climbing up tall structures (see also BATMAN, DARKMAN), CG-zooming into Daredevil’s eyes and ears, using ghostly animated figures to represent what he senses from his echo powers. I love the shot where Quesada is running away, falls to his knees next to a puddle, the camera stays on the puddle so we see the reflection of tiny Daredevil on a building above, leaping out and then his feet land in frame, splashing the puddle away. The cinematographer is Ericson Core (PAYBACK, THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, the POINT BREAK remake [which he also directed]).
The tone of the movie changes when Matt senses a pretty lady (Jennifer Garner, MR. MAGOO) coming into a coffee shop and hits on her. He follows her, pisses her off and grabs her wrist when she tries to leave, so they start doing kung fu, and are impressed by each other’s skills, so it turns into a flirtatious duel. They throw off their jackets, the guitars start rocking out, the drum machine kicks in, they’re leaping and balancing on seesaws and shit, children gather around and cheer them on. It’s extremely corny but choreographed by the great Cheung-Yan Yuen (IRON MONKEY, TAI CHI MASTER, FIST OF LEGEND, THE RED WOLF, CHARLIE’S ANGELS) with a bunch of wire work, so what can I do? I kinda like it. Some of the other fights are choreographed by Jeff Imada (THE BOOK OF ELI, HANNA, stunt coordinator of many John Carpenter movies), Affleck’s fight trainer is BATMAN fight double David Lea, and other stunt legends who worked on it include Kane Hodder, David Leitch, Al Leong, J.J. Perry, Jonathan Eusebio and Brad Martin. So it’s more of a legit fight movie than most non-BLADE super hero joints.
It turns out the lady is Elektra Natchios, daughter of Greek billionaire Nikolas Natchios (Erick Avari, ENCINO MAN). Also I should mention Joe Pantoliano (RISKY BUSINESS) plays a New York Post reporter named Urich who’s trying to prove that “the Daredevil” isn’t an urban legend, exactly like Robert Wuhl’s character Knox in BATMAN, except with a backwards Kangol instead of a fedora.
I did watch the director’s cut, which is 30 minutes longer, rated R instead of PG-13, and widely agreed to be way better than the theatrical version. I didn’t remember the original enough to notice any difference, but apparently the biggest addition is the subplot about Murdock defending innocent murder suspect Coolio (CHINA STRIKE FORCE). I appreciate the sentiment, but man are they not good scenes.
Still, here I was so happy to be experiencing one of those rare cases of a movie I thought was dog shit at the time that I watch years later and discover I like it now. Then, just under 50 minutes into the 133 minute director cut, it lost me. I had rolled with the Elektra kung-fu meet cute, I had forgiven the wackiness with Coolio, but then they turn the movie over to a character I gotta put near Jim Carrey’s The Riddler as one of the all time worst comic book movie villains. I’m fine with the main bad guy Wilson Fisk (Michael Clarke Duncan right after THE SCORPION KING), a cartoonishly gigantic businessman who’s also the mysterious crime lord known as The Kingpin. My beef is with the assassin he hires, Bullseye (Colin Farrell, DEAD MAN DOWN), the evil master of throwing stuff.
Farrell was kind of the hot new guy, still pretty fresh in his stardom after his critically acclaimed performance in Joel Schumacher’s TIGERLAND got him parts in MINORITY REPORT and THE RECRUIT and Schumacher had him star in PHONE BOOTH. Here he goes mega, doing lots of ridiculous strutting and posing. I found it very annoying at the time, now it plays as parody. But I think it’s less about the performance than the fact that there is no humanly way for an actor to make this interpretation of this character seem cool. Steve McQueen couldn’t do it. Richard Roundtree couldn’t do it. Prince couldn’t do it. Nobody could.
He’s introduced in a comedy scene where a House of Pain song is used to signal that he’s Irish and he kills a guy by flicking paper clips at him. A few minutes later there’s another comedy scene where an old lady sitting next to him on the plane talks too much so he kills her by flicking a peanut. Later projectiles include a throwing star belt buckle, a playing card, a collection plate, and two giant pancake-style stacks of glass shards he catches mid-air after swinging up and kicking out a stained glass window.
And here’s the biggest problem – he’s supposed to be ExXxTREME! Sometimes he wears a beanie, when he takes it off he’s bald with a target carved into his forehead. He has seven earrings in one ear, two on his eyebrow, the most 2003 sunglasses ever created, a bicycle chain necklace, and a ludicrous lizard-skin-type duster that makes whoosh sound effects when he puts it on or swings it around. He looks like Bono’s loser cousin who thinks he’s edgy, or a guy who got kicked out of the worst band on the soundtrack for this movie.
Which reminds me that all of this is made ten times more stupid by the chunka chunka guitars constantly trying to tell us that Bullseye is soooooo awesome you guys. Personally, I’m not convinced. It’s a relief whenever the movie forgets about him for a bit.
Elektra finds Matt one night (as she promised) and I do kinda like the romance between them. I disapprove of him abruptly ditching her on dates when he hears crimes that he really doesn’t have a duty to get involved with, but movie characters don’t have to make good decisions.
The first time Bullseye is in a non-comedy scene he stands up in a Jesus pose riding a motorcycle through traffic as an original track by Drowning Pool ȵṻ-ḿễⱡǻȴȿ us in the face.
Daredevil hears the guitars and megaphone vocals from above and tries to stop Bullseye from attacking the Natchios’ in their limo. Elektra doesn’t see Bullseye roaring around doing awesome wheelies on his cool guy motorbike, or throwing Daredevil’s cane and impaling her dad, she just sees Daredevil nearby and thinks he’s the killer. After the funeral she decides to redirect her unexplained heavy duty martial arts training toward killing him, and we know she’s ready when she spins her sais and kicks a bunch of hanging sandbags to the dramatic rock ’n roll stylings of Evanescence, with strings arranged by Revell.
Elektra’s quest for vengeance only lasts maybe five minutes of screen time. Now wearing a black leather halter top she attacks Daredevil on a rooftop, and he says, “Wait – it wasn’t me! It was a hitman named Bullseye!” She calls him a liar and does some cool flips and shit. She throws a sai so hard it sticks into a brick wall, then runs up said wall as she pulls it out and gives Daredevil the wound he’s suffering from at the beginning of the movie.
Then she unmasks him and I actually like that she immediately realizes she was wrong and also shows the respect of putting his mask back on him before she turns to duel Bullseye (who shows up right then and whistles at her).
I genuinely like that Daredevil, Elektra and Bullseye all take full advantage of the wire rigs to leap off tall things and toss people around and stuff. And when Bullseye doesn’t bother with his asinine object-throwing shtick, just stabs Elektra with her own sai, lifting her off the ground (in a direct reference to the comic), then tosses her off a roof, it’s pretty effective. Suddenly he’s less joke, more threat. (An hour and 44 minutes into the movie.)
I also like that Kingpin just stays in his penthouse office as a rain storm batters the windows, waiting for Daredevil to show up for a boxing match/cane fight. And that it plays by action movie rules that because he’s large he can just pick up Daredevil, toss him at the ceiling, pick him up with one hand and throw him ten feet into a wall, etc. We get shattered glass, sprinklers going off, the works. Then Daredevil shows he’s learned his lesson and knows murdering is for meanies. That’s the followup to a part I liked earlier where he’s beating up a criminal and a kid who’s there starts crying and saying “Please don’t hurt me.” Daredevil has to stand on a roof in the rain muttering “I’m not the bad guy. I’m not,” to himself. Now he proves it.
So the story ends on a pretty good note – not counting another wacky Coolio scene and one where Urich writes an amateurish article called “DAREDEVIL REVEALED.” After typing Matt Murdock’s name he hovers his finger between the “print” and “delete” keys (are we not supposed to know what those keys do?) and then decides not to go through with outing him, but rather than closing the document without saving it he holds down backspace to watch the whole thing delete one letter at a time. I also want to note that this guy puts two spaces between sentences. Is he new at computers? Everybody sucks at their job in this movie.
The characters that is. The actors are fine. Both Affleck and Garner will seem a little more comfortable in later action roles (THE ACCOUNTANT and PEPPERMINT for example), and Affleck will have more super hero gravitas by the time he’s playing Batman. But they have many good moments in this and not that many bad ones. They don’t seem as smooth with the martial arts as, say, Keanu, but they definitely put alot of work into it. On the blu-ray extras we learn that they did the whole playground fight without doubles, and there are a bunch of outtakes of Affleck in another scene doing a wire assisted jump over and over until he gets it right, even though he’s wearing the mask and could surely let somebody else do it.
By the way, I always thought this leather Daredevil costume looked dumb, but what they made the poor little guy in the TV version wear taught me to appreciate it. Affleck looks sleeker, his mask is much cooler, his jaw and expressions look way better. So it didn’t bother me anymore.
This is the rare comic book movie from a writer/director, but Mark Steven Johnson had only directed SIMON BIRCH and his other writing credits were GRUMPY OLD MEN, GRUMPIER OLD MEN, BIG BULLY and JACK FROST. (He would later write and direct GHOST RIDER.) I will say this for him: he does way better than that filmography would imply.
20+ years later I was not fully won over by DAREDEVIL, but I don’t hate it anymore. I mostly just hate Bullseye. And the soundtrack. But I was almost 30 when this came out, I’m supposed to hate that shit. (Daredevil: The Album was certified gold and made it to #9 on the US Billboard charts.)
If DAREDEVIL and I can’t be allies, at least we’re not enemies anymore. I promise never to flick paper clips at it or anything.
February 29th, 2024 at 1:03 pm
I don’t think anybody ever called the director’s cut “great”. It was more of an ALIEN³ situation, where the longer version made the movie better, but still not good. (Plus: someone releasing a much longer version of any movie is always a plus among movie fans, even if the results still suck.)
The biggest difference between the two versions, outside from the Coolio subplot, was a scene where Daredevil hears someone cry for help while he is on a date with Elektra, but decides to ignore it and then they fuck. In the director’s cut he instead ditches her and helps, which is kinda weird, if you think about it. One would think that the theatrical cut would have the “safe” version, where the hero doesn’t listen to his dick and instead does hero stuff, while the autheur cut would reinstate the scene that could make the hero look like a selfish dick. Also if I remember right, in the director’s cut Leland Orser betrays Kingpin in the end, while he just disappears in the theatrical version and the police shows up for no good reason
I really didn’t get the Colin Farrell hype by that time. I thought it was awful in everything. Until around 2006 or so, when he suddenly became…good! Even his non-dramatic SCRUBS guest spot made me go “Woah, what happened to that motherfucker? He stepped up his game!” And then of course IN BRUGE came out and I became a fan.
It was really an odd time for superhero movies. BATMAN & ROBIN was still a punchline. But we also had 2 X-MEN movies and Raimi’s SPIDER-MAN, which even got lots of love from “serious” critics and were huge smash hits. Then DAREDEVIL came out and everybody was like “Oh yeah, right, superhero movies can be bad, we forgot.”
The soundtrack, well…you know I’m a SONGS FROM AND INSPIRED BY THE MOTION PICTURE compilation collector and of course I own it. But yeah, this isn’t another case of “Bad movie with great soundtrack”. The two Evanescence songs (BRING ME TO LIFE and MY IMMORTAL) still hold up IMO, there is a Moby song that is not bad but definitely not one of his best works and of course that song during the motorcycle scene from Drowning Pool and Rob Zombie (If I remember correctly, Zombie did it mostly as a favour after their original singer died), but the rest is just really forgettable and was even on release kinda blah.
In conclusion: Go watch BLADE 2 again.