DAREDEVIL ***
DIRECTED BY Mark Steven Johnson
STARRING Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Colin Farrell, Michael Clarke Duncan
US 2003 103 mins.
By Preston Wilder
WHO IS Daredevil? Well, let’s see. He leaves his trademark – a double ‘D’ – behind after he fights crime, like a modern-day Zorro. Like Batman, he’s haunted by the murder of his father (the killer is identified by his own trademark – a red rose – just like Jack Napier’s “Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight?”). Above all, like Spider-Man, he’s a mutant: blinded by radioactive waste as a child, he uses his remaining, preternaturally heightened senses to hear, touch and smell everything around him, making him invincible.
None of which explains how he can leap from one tall building to another in a single bound, or dodge bullets – even if he hears them coming, how can he move fast enough? – or grab a metal bar with his hand as an opponent brings it down, but let’s not get technical. Besides, I suspect these details are explained in the comic-book on which this is based, if only because the film is made in a spirit of such reverence to the original (it’s been loudly approved by the comic-book aficionados on Internet film sites like www.aint-it-cool-news.com). Marvel Comics are among the producers, and director Mark Steven Johnson was chosen primarily because he’s such a big Daredevil fan. The film doesn’t even bother to explain such details as Daredevil sleeping in a flotation tank or being advised by a mysterious priest, no doubt reckoning the fans know this stuff already.
How about those (including me) who’ve never read the comic? In that case, much will depend on what you thought of last year’s Spider-Man. That’s by far the best analogy, not just because the two heroes are so similar and even interact in the Marvel Comics universe – both have gone against chief villain Kingpin, and even gone against each other on one occasion – but because Daredevil the film is patterned in many ways on Spider-Man. Unlike comic-book movies of the 90s – most obviously the Batman films – irony has been replaced by sincerity, and ‘post-modern’ jokiness banished: relationships are played straight, though one may giggle slightly at the way Daredevil’s meetings with Elektra (sexy Garner, of TV’s Alias) always seem to provoke sudden rainstorms (a script contrivance, since he can only ‘see’ her in the rain for reasons too complicated to go into).
One may also wonder just how healthy it is for comic-book heroes to be granted such respect, their moral anxieties – “I’m not the bad guy!” cries Daredevil – elevated to the realm of real people’s feelings. Wasn’t it more appropriate when the 60s Batman knocked villains out with cartoon ‘BIFFs’ and ‘POWs’? On the other hand I must admit I loved Spider-Man, and thoroughly enjoyed this one too for about an hour – till I suddenly realised how little I cared for the story and characters.
There’s lots of cool stuff in Daredevil. Our hero’s brand of ‘blind vision’ is expressed in weird X-ray-like images, with each sound exploding in arcs of white light through the greyness. His semi-playful fight with Elektra makes a nifty action set-piece. Duncan (the massive black giant from The Green Mile) gets a fabulous entrance as Kingpin, smoking a huge cigar in close-up as N.E.R.D.’s ‘Lapdance’ plays in the background. Jon Favreau is funny as our hero’s lawyer partner, bemoaning the fact that their Law Office defends only poor people: one of them even paid in fish, he grumbles. The client doesn’t have much money, explains Daredevil, and he likes to go fishing on the weekends. “I take salsa lessons on the weekends,” comes the reply, “but I don’t shake my ass to pay my phone bill.”
All this is enjoyable. But the problem – if this makes any sense – is that not enough happens and too much happens. Kingpin doesn’t have any grand plan, nor is there any particular quest, nor is Daredevil’s search for the man who killed his father really an issue: the only real plot point is Elektra mistakenly thinking our hero is the man who killed her father, and that’s only there for about five minutes. Yet the film makes such demands on a viewer, pumping everything up so earnestly – the love affair, DD’s revenge, his moral qualms about what he’s doing. It’s not just about a superhero, but actually comparable to one: a thin little man bulked up in a grandiose costume, with special effects for special powers.
Much of the above was also true of Spider-Man, yet that film worked a lot better; the difference, I think, lies in the difference between Tobey Maguire and Ben Affleck. Maguire, who played Spidey, is a sensitive actor with a real touch of magic; Affleck, who plays ‘Devil’, is glib and smirky, his long-chinned face constantly looking like he’s about to launch into a great hee-haw laugh. Comic-book films are inherently silly, with inevitable plot holes (how, for instance, do the cops know Fisk is Kingpin at the end of this one?); you need more than skill to make them work – you need charisma, the kind of power that’ll charm the audience into doing half the work, papering the cracks with goodwill. Who is Daredevil? He’s good, but not that good.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
