Daredevil
2003
Action
96 m
Starring

Ben Affleck
Jennifer Garner
Colin Farrell
Joe Pantoliano
Michael Clarke Duncan
Jon Favreau
David Keith

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Movie Review
Daredevil
of 5

A run in with toxic waste as child leaves a NYC lawyer blind. But his remaining senses are super-keen, allowing him to practice pro bono work during the day and fight injustice at night. Based on the comic book hero.

A movie you could easily love or hate. Those who love it will applaud the fast-pace, banging soundtrack and super-human stunts. If you are interested in things like character development and useful dialogue, you may be disappointed, however.

The fast pace comes courtesy of rapid fire editing that only occasionally looks choppy, but certainly has robbed us from learning anything interesting about the characters. While there is interesting background on our hero, the chief villain (Duncan) and especially the shadowy heiress Elektra (Garner) are ignored. I would've welcomed adding 8 or 10 minutes to runtime in an effort to carve out these characters further.

Garner looks great and has an interesting character to play, unfortunately the script ignores the character and she is off screen before you know it. Duncan puts on a great villainous face but there is little to no prologue about him and the character just isn't interesting. Daredevil himself (Affleck) fairs better than most in the film. His physical stature seems well suited for the role and he plays the lawyer angle well also. Joe Pantoliano is wasted in the film. He plays a reporter trying to catch up to the superhero (imagine that), but again we're robbed of a potentially interesting character here. Jon Favreau does provide us with some comic relief as the 'Devil's quipping law partner. But the winner of the Daredevil casting sweepstakes is by far Colin Farrell as the hitman, Bullseye. He puts an evil life into a great character. None of these characters have great dialogue, but Bullseye hits the mark as a guy you will want to see more of. (Read: Sequel).

Pleasing, Woo-like, action sequences and nifty hero's-point-of-view visuals will excite the action fan. I also was impressed with the lighting (of all things); it kept a dark tone but wasn't overbearing or brooding. And Kevin Smith's cameo appearance was welcomed also. All this being said, I largely enjoyed this film but it wasn't a marvel in filmmaking (no pun intended).

Directed by Mark Steven Johnson.

 

 

 
 
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