12 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FILM BENDOWN
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2003
'Daredevil'weak in comic-book style
REVIEW
Stephen Shupe
sshupe@kansan.com
Reading comic books is like joining an exclusive club—it's the geek equivalent of Studio 54. At the complete opposite end is the infinitely accessible and commercial club of Hollywood movies. Thanks to Stan Lee and the uninspired members of the Screenwriter's Guild, these forces have formed a filmmaking conglomerate, to mixed artistic results.
Daredevil, the first Stan Lee-Warner Bros. production since Sam Raimi's hugely successful Spider-Man, reeks of the kind of dangers that arise from melding two extremes of the popular culture spectrum. If American audiences want their superheroes to sport Nokia phones and Gucci clothes, then the line between art and commerce has officially been blurred forever.
When we first see him, cradling a cross high above Hell's Kitchen, Matt Murdock (Ben Affleck) doesn't look like much, even in his devil-red costume that suggests a second layer of flesh.
But wait, the filmmakers decide that's the end of the movie, so we flashback to Scott Terra, who plays Matt at age 12 in the best and earliest scenes of Daredevil. Tony Soprano's son (OK, the actor who plays
Tony Soprano's son, Robert Iler) picks on poor Matt, whose father was once a skilled prizefighter but now works as the muscle of a local kingpin.
One day, Matt sees his dad beating up a man for money owed to the mob, and when Matt runs for it, he gets sprayed with toxic chemicals that blind him for life.
After his freak accident, Matt's other senses become supercharged. His hearing is so in-tune that vibrations send X-ray visions of audible objects flashing across his mind's eye. When his dad gives up the life of crime, Matt pledges to serve as the guardian of the city, and takes his father's professional name, Jack "the Devil" Murdock, as his own.
This promising set-up dissolves into mediocrity as Affleck takes over the picture. The director, Mark Steven Johnson, has tried to make up for his own lack of talent with a great cast that unfortunately doesn't deliver.
The way his scenes have been filmed mostly in close-ups, you can tell Colin Farrell, who plays the evil Bullseye, is supposed to be the highlight of the movie. But Farrell leers though a grotesquely smug performance that'll leave you hoping Affleck squashes his tiny head like a grapefruit.
Jennifer Garner, who's earned rave reviews for her work on television's Alias, looks mostly stranded as Affleck's rough-and-tumble love interest, Elektra. Her first scene, where she pulls Crouching Tiger moves on Affleck for no apparent reason, is as good a time as any to count all the reasons why you shouldn't be seeing this movie.
High on my list of grievances would be choppy visual effects, unnecessary killings, corny lines like "Justice is served," endless helicopter shots of the city, and the fact that the movie shows the white hero
DAREDEVIL ... D+
Starring: Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner and Colin Farrell
Rated PG-13 for action/violence and some sensuality
Playing at South Wind 12 Theatres, 3433 Iowa St.
can only truly become a hero by beating up a black man.
Even for a comic book-film that takes Tim Burton's gothic Batman and Alex Proyas' action-heavy The Crow as cinematic blueprints, well-staged fight scenes are not a redeeming value. I'm sure Johnson had good intentions when he took this movie to Warner Bros., but these tinseltown vampires control every last detail. It must have been like editing with his hands tied behind his back when they asked him to put pop favorites like Moby and The Calling on the soundtrack.
If comic books are meant to inhabit their own universe, this is what happens when worlds collide.
Shupe is an Augusta graduate student in journalism.