Seeing how Marvel's Daredevil series premiered on Netflix last week, I thought it only fitting to revisit 2003's Daredevil, starring Ben Affleck. I remember watching the theatrical cut as a kid and not really knowing what to make of it; all I knew about Daredevil, I learned from times he'd teamed up with Spider-Man. He was blind, saw using a sort of radar sense, and carried around a billy club/grappling hook. Having come out in the Marvel superhero boom of the early 2000's, Daredevil is a lot darker than your standard Marvel fare like Spider-Man and X-Men, both literally and figuratively. It didn't leave much of an impression on me back then and I always figured it was just another crummy adaptation; which is why I was surprised to hear a while back that the R-rated director's cut (released in 2004) was apparently far superior to the original product. Admittedly, that's not saying much, but I feel as though this version still deserves a watch.
The plot is about as basic as they come; Ben Affleck plays Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer who moonlights as a satan-themed vigilante named Daredevil. He finds love in the form of a billionaire's daughter by the name of Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner) and goes up against the criminal forces of the Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan) and Bullseye (Collin Farrell). Some people die, there's a few fights, and it's all over in about two hours. The plot's nothing special, but it never really drags, so I'm in no position to complain. I wasn't impressed, but I certainly wasn't bored.
The interesting thing about this movie that I noticed right away is just how consistently inconsistent it is. For literally its entire runtime, it flip-flops between actually being legitimately good to being unintentionally hilarious. Take the beginning, for example. We get a really nicely put together look at Matt's childhood; it establishes his relationship with his father, his moral code, and the whole reason he was blinded in the first place. It's well shot and, for the most part, well acted. But then we get a scene where young Matt fights a group of bullies by whapping them with his walking stick. Later on, when he's all grown up and flipping around as Daredevil, he goes to a biker bar in order to enact justice on a rapist who got off scott-free. This sounds like a really cool premise, except that the biker bar in question looks like the Ninja Turtles will bust in at any moment to fight the Foot Clan. When the thugs notice Daredevil just hanging out in the rafters and ask what he wants, he replies "JUSTICE" in his best Batman voice and proceeds to kick a little butt. It's a really cool fight scene (he surfs down a flight of stairs on top of an unconscious perp, for God's sake), but there's little odd moments that break up the impressive stuff with something completely laughable. Even in the climax (which is honestly fantastic), where Ol' Hornhead is beating on the Kingpin. He's about to finish him off when he stops; "I'm not the bad guy", he says. This is literally less than ten minutes after Daredevil picked up a man who was on his knees, pleading for mercy, flung him through a stained-glass window, and made a little quip as he landed head-first on the hood of a car at least two stories below. The movie fluctuates from something legitimately good to complete and utter schlock so often it's downright fascinating.
Speaking of fascinating, I happened to notice that nearly every character who isn't adapted from the comics is just named after someone who worked at Marvel; there's Lee, Kirby, Romita, Millar, Quesada (just to name a few). I wonder how Joe Quesada felt about having his name assigned to a character who gloats about the fact that he was acquitted of rape, only to be murdered by a subway train a few minutes later. If I ever meet Mr. Quesada at a convention, I'll be sure to ask him.
But anyways, in the supporting cast we've got Happy Hogan himself, Jon Favreau as Foggy Nelson; honestly, he and Affleck have some legitimately good chemistry. The scenes they share are very obviously the "comedic" moments in between all the punching and Evanescence, but Favreau is good at what he does in this role. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Jennifer Garner. I honestly couldn't care less about her romance with Ben Affleck and as a result, felt next to nothing at the various emotional beats sprinkled throughout. I know that the two are married in real life, so this is especially unfortunate, but I'm just calling it like I see it; the romantic subplot in this movie is kinda garbage. Luckily, we don't need to care about the romance; it's a pittance compared to what I believe to be two of the most underrated villain performances ever committed to a film adaptation of a comic book.
Collin Farrell and Michael Clarke Duncan completely steal the show here; if there's one thing director Mark Johnson understood about the source material, it's the villains. Duncan's Kingpin is honestly the reason I felt so underwhelmed by Vincent D'Onofrio's turn in the recent Netflix series; this version of Wilson Fisk is a classic crime lord, raised in the Bronx, only to end up with all of New York City deep in his pocket. The very first time we're introduced to him, he's smoking a massive cigar in his office while Lapdance by N.E.R.D. blares in the background. The man exudes class, affluence, and influence. He can go from smooth and confident one second to raging and violent in the next. Underneath his pressed suit is a solid wall of muscle; he feels threatening and in control no matter what he's doing. On the other side is Farrell's Bullseye; the character in the comics has three basic traits that need to be retained in any adaptation. The first, he never misses. Second, he's almost comically Irish. Third, he's completely and utterly insane. Collin Farrell cranks all three of those traits up to eleven and the result is an utter joy to watch. He's a villain who absolutely loves what he does, and what he does is kill people in really showy, impressive ways. He's good at it and it gives him purpose. Villains who are sympathetic and relatable are all well and good, but there's something I love about a complete and utter bastard who just loves being a complete and utter bastard.
On the technical side, we get some really good cinematography for the most part; I can appreciate that the people behind this tried to make it something more than just another superhero blockbuster. For instance, there's a scene in which Daredevil chases down a crook and starts beating on him, only to notice the thug's son cowering in fear, terrified that Matt will turn his wrath on him. Just as Matt saw his dad suffer for getting involved with organized crime, now this kid gets to watch his father be beaten for working for the wrong guy. It gives him a good motivation to go after the Kingpin; it's not just that he's a big bad evil guy. Fisk's influence has poisoned the lifeblood of Murdock's neighborhood; this is why Daredevil does what he does. The way his radar-sense is portrayed is pretty neat too; we get to see things through Matt's eyes, watching sound waves ping across an environment, tracing out a sonar map. When the sound changes, so does his view of the world around him. It's a neat visual trick that helps make some moments have a little more impact that they would have had if they were shot normally. All that said, this is a movie from 2003; the action is for the most part pretty great, except for when Ben Affleck turns into a computer-generated puppet-man, flipping and flopping across rooftops and fire escapes. The soundtrack is painfully dated as well; the orchestrated stuff is fine, but the abundance of licensed early 2000's tween-metal is just insufferable. There's a training montage set to Evanescence's Bring Me To Life that is played 100% straight. That should sum up the state of the music in this film perfectly (though the songs that introduce Kingpin and Bullseye are both superb).
All in all, Daredevil is an interesting film. It's not exactly good overall, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing of value to be found. Michael Clarke Duncan and Collin Farrell are worth the price of admission alone, and there's enough stuff here that manages to be either legitimately cool or hilariously terrible that I was never really bored while watching it (which is better than I can say for some of the other things I've watched for this site). If you like the comics (or *gag* Evanescence) or you want to see an oddball leftover from the early days of Marvel movies (before the unstoppable juggernaut we know as the MCU was even a twinkle in Kevin Feige's eye), grab yourself a copy of the director's cut and give it a watch.
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