Daredevil

Let me say this from the start – I’ve never actually written a review of a movie before. I have no idea how to do it. Within the next few minutes you’ll know I have no idea how to do it. So don’t think of this as a bad review, think of this as a first review. A bad first review.

Daredevil is yet another comic book movie. Only he isn’t as famous as Batman or Superman or the Incredible Hulk. He may be slightly better known than Bluntman and Chronic but they only got a movie within a movie. And they only got Mark Hamill while Daredevil gets Ben Affleck. He’s a guy that seems to make a lot of movies that I never see. Off the top of my head I think I’ve seen him in a bunch of Kevin Smith films and that’s it. He was obnoxious in Mallrats, emotional in Chasing Amy, a mass killer with a touch of style in Dogma and all of the above in Jay and Silent Bob. So he’s versatile when speaking the words of a comic book fanatic, how is he at speaking the words of a comic book character? He’s ok. The thing with superheroes is that they never really have much in the way of character on screen. Partly to mask (literally) the identity of who is behind the costume and partly because the limited screen time means that action comes first, a romance (doomed or non-doomed) comes second and maybe a few bits of acting tacked on when there’s time.

It isn’t helped that Affleck is overshadowed by so many other factors in the film. Firstly he’s got to explain the absurd back-story of Daredevil. That he got his super powers when a barrel of chemicals hit him in the face. We’ve all grown up with the idea that radiation causes superpowers – Spiderman was bitten by a radioactive spider, Hulk was genetically modified by something radioactive (was it an explosion? I’m a bit rusty) and even Superman’s powers come from the sun. We accept those equally ridiculous explanations because we’ve known them all our lives. For the viewer unfamiliar with Daredevil (which includes me) it comes across as Superhero Back-story By Numbers. I didn’t feel it was adequately explained either how super-hearing, super-smell, super-taste and super-touch translates into the super-powers he has. He can run and jump and fight with amazing skill and speed when I’d expect him to be able to host a wine segment on "Food and Drink".

Secondly he is upstaged by the visual effects. Not the fight scenes, rather the imaginative sonar effect used to display Matt Murdoch’s vision. Sound waves bouncing off all around him to create a shimmering, ephemeral landscape which he slowly learns to understand and use to his advantage. On the big screen it no doubt looked even more impressive and the cinema environment was made for the disorientating explosion of sound that his newly empowered ears find when he wakes up in hospital. There are a couple of moments in the movie when this “sonar” is shown to have its flaws and this helps us to understand it. If the effect hadn’t been right it would've looked more like x-ray vision.

Alas he’s also less impactful than the CGI which litters the film. Daredevil, you see, flits about the city like something out of the Matrix and this swooping and swinging and diving and leaping is not terribly convincing. The new Star Wars movies are unwatchable for me as they are so fake. Daredevil doesn’t overdo it to quite that extent but there are periods where it looks less like a film than it does a video game. Even if the effects worked, they still use it too much. Less is more. Especially when it’s Tomb Raider calibre digital fannying around. Entertainments require suspension of disbelief to be successful. In the past, that suspension was ruined by poor use of body or stunt doubles or by seeing an actor you recognise from a particularly mundane advert. Now you can lose interest in a film because you don’t even know if you’re watching a human being or an over achieving screen saver.

One thing that doesn’t out-do dear Ben is his co-star Jennifer Garner. She obviously has a lot going for her as she has her own show – Alias – which is over like neckbone with American viewers. Whatever it is she has in that show, she’s left it in her dressing room for Daredevil. She plays a high kicking action chick who is also… nope. She is just a high kicking action chick. “Trained by sensees since the age of five” she explains during one of her few interesting moments. She doesn’t even look that attractive either. I guess a successful TV series automatically enrols you for the Hollywood Diet. She’s all skin and bone and when you have cheekbones like she does, gaunt is a very easy expression to end up with.

So is there anything good about Daredevil? It’s a fun hour and a half. I probably found more reasons to dislike it because I had the idea to review it and so let fewer things simply wash over me than when I’m in the Popcorn Spirit. It’s utterly undemanding. Boy has chemical accident, boys gets super powers, boy meets girl, girl’s father gets killed by the same people that killed boy’s father and boy gets revenge. The usual story. I don’t feel that I’ve wasted the evening by watching it (and the DVD features Kevin Smith in the comic adaptation documentary so that can’t be bad) but equally I don’t feel I’ve gained anything. Of the three DVD movies bought in the last three days, I may have picked the wrong one if I was after a really satisfying film. Donnie Darko or 28 Days Later might’ve hit the mark rather more effectively.

And there we have it. Eight hundred and fifty words about Daredevil. It’s not terribly good, it tries to be too clever and ultimately takes a fairly obscure premise and makes a disappointing hash of it. But enough of my review, did you like the film?

20th January 2004