February 14, 2003 | In the alternative universe of comic-book movies, there are limits to how much realism we seek or desire. Very few of us would be thrilled to see Batman take the Batmobile in for emissions testing. And it likely wouldn’t be much fun to find Spider-Man hit with a wrongful arrest lawsuit – or, worse, subjected to charges of criminal harassment — by the legal team of a savvy super villain.
Still, there’s something tantalizingly clever, if not downright subversive, about the daubs of verisimilitude applied here and there in Daredevil, the latest action-adventure ripped from the pages of Marvel Comics.
For the benefit of those who tuned in late: Daredevil (a.k.a. The Man Without Fear) is a crimson-suited crime-fighter with rippling muscles, martial-arts prowess, preternaturally enhanced senses and, when push comes to shove, a handy-dandy, multi-purpose billyclub. Unfortunately, his senses were enhanced by a childhood accident – depicted in the movie as an unfortunate collision with toxic waste – that left him blind as a bat. But never mind: His remaining faculties are so amazingly amped, he can “see” via sound waves, like a one-man sonar system.
And yet, for all that, Daredevil occasionally gets the worst of it in fights. Which is why, fairly early in the movie that bears his name, our hero caps off a long night of crime-fighting by raiding his well-stocked medicine cabinet for a few potent painkillers. (Percodin and Darvon appear to be his drugs of choice.) After that, it’s time for some shut-eye in a sensory-deprivation tank – which, of course, is the only place where a super-hero with preternaturally-enhanced senses could ever enjoy uninterrupted slumber.
Here and elsewhere, it’s as though the movie were telling us: OK, maybe this couldn’t happen. But if it could, this is how it would happen.
A little of this goes a long way, and the makers of Daredevil are smart enough not to get carried away. On the other hand, the gestures do a lot to make the material accessible and arresting even for people with no prior knowledge of Marvel Comics mythology.
Written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson (Simon Birch), whose fan-boy enthusiasm is at once amusingly obvious and highly contagious, Daredevil overlays its framework of quasi-realism with an abundance of visual hyperbole and narrative fantasticality, then spices the mix with healthy doses of Hong Kong-style kung-fu, wire-work and acrobatic mayhem.
The movie is boldly and brazenly larger-than-life, a rock-the-house popcorn flick propelled by thunderous waves of vengeful obsession and faux-operatic passion. Even at its most excessive, however, Daredevil never allows anything to get too far out of hand. The well-cast villains of the piece – Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan), a super-sized crime lord who speaks softly and carries a big stick, and Bullseye (Colin Farrell), a madcap Irish assassin who turns paperclips, peanuts and pencils into lethal missiles – are unabashedly over the top, but also refreshingly down to earth in terms of their motives, ambitions and professional jealousies. (After being bested by Daredevil in their first clash, Bullseye barks: “I want my own bloody costume!”)
And while our hero may be a fully-fledged super hero by night, he’s only an underpaid lawyer by day. That means he can’t afford a Batcave or a Fortress of Solitude. So when he needs a place to stash his costume, his replacement billyclubs and, most important, his sensory-deprivation tank, he has to make do with a spare room in his New York brownstone.
Ben Affleck hits all of the right notes as Matt Murdock, the sight-impaired attorney, and Daredevil, Matt’s red-suited alter ego. When masked for action, Affleck makes a furiously intense yet affectingly self-doubting vigilante. But he’s a good deal more ingratiating while Murdock works at his day job. For one thing, he gets to smile at lot more when he’s not dodging bullets or pursuing malefactors. For another thing, Affleck slyly suggests – no, actually, he roguishly announces – that a guy with preternaturally-enhanced senses might be turned on whenever he sniffs a attractive woman within 10 feet of him.
The movie’s most delightfully absurd sequence has an instantly smitten Matt in pursuit of the drop-dead gorgeous Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner of TV’s Alias), a formidable young woman who leads our hero into a rock-’em, sock-’em mating dance at a neighborhood playground. As they precariously balance on seesaws, or run up the sides of walls, while tossing wisecracks and swift kicks at each other, Daredevil briefly mutates into a giddily exuberant hybrid – think Singing’ in the Rain crossed with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – with choreography by Hong Kong action master Yuen Cheung-Yan.
It’s a welcome note of sunny effervescence in a movie that’s mostly midnight black. True to the comic-book mythos, Elektra becomes a blade-wielding warrior to avenge a loved one’s death. (Unfortunately, she’s not terribly good at it, which brings about even more grief.) Daredevil, fueled by conflicting drives of bloodlust and Catholic guilt, battles one foe in a gothic cathedral – where, in another welcome touch of realism, he usually goes to confess his sins – then confronts another bad guy in a sky-high penthouse on a dark and stormy night. And so it goes.
Before I start getting anxious queries (or angry complaints) from concerned parents of grade-schoolers, let me underscore what should already be obvious: Daredevil is a comic book movie, but it’s not kid stuff. The violence pushes the boundaries of PG-13 respectability – at one point, Daredevil does nothing while a minor sleazeball endures a grisly quietus. And while it’s not quite as baroquely doom-and-gloomy as Tim Burton’s Batman movies, it is equally up-front about acknowledging the darker impulses of its masked-vigilante hero.
To make the inevitable comparison to another Marvel-inspired extravaganza: Spider-Man succeeded gloriously as a gee-whiz rollercoaster ride; Daredevil, a lesser movie that’s nonetheless enjoyable on its own terms, takes a much bumpier trip down appreciably meaner streets.
