Daredevil Review

(As a manga otaku, not a comic otaku, I will strive to reflect on connections to the comic canon or lack thereof in the films I review, animated or live action. I owe that much to the real fans)

Daredevil is my second favorite Marvel character besides the Punisher. The fact that he is a disabled character and yet able to fight off much stronger characters already makes him stand out; plus he’s one of the few noteworthy blind heroes that people can name from memory. It might be the costume that reminds you of a devil with the horns, it might be the weapon combat with billyclubs combined with the acrobatics that are less than believable with a blind character feeling it the whole way, but the character from Hell’s Kitchen in New York has persisted through the decades and this live action film attests to it (however much many may not enjoy it). I know I didn’t think much of it initially, seeing the ending fight between Daredevil and Kingpin and thinking it was cool, but not to the extent I’d want to buy the film. And about 4 years later, I watched the film and promised myself I’d review it soon in the future. So now I’ll make good on that promise.

The credits open with what are apparently Braille versions of the main four actors’ names, changing to regular characters, which is a nice start. We have a flash forward to events much later in the film with Daredevil falling into a church, bleeding profusely and being found by the priest there. He then begins to flash through his life, beginning as a child of a semi-retired boxer, Jack “the Devil” Murdock. Living in the slums of Hell’s Kitchen, Matt was bullied, but his father taught him that he can do anything if he’s not afraid. He finds his father beating a guy up for protection money, discovering he is working for Falen, a crime boss in the city. Running away, he is involved in an accident and is blinded by an unknown chemical. He wakes up with enhanced hearing to the point he has sonar like vision, his initial exposure showing his great weakness of sharp and sudden loud noises. He and his father then began to work towards their goals. His father gets back into boxing and Matt begins to self-train himself to adjust to his blindness with the aid of his “Daredevil vision”. Stan Lee makes a short appearance at 13 minutes in as the story progresses into Murdock Sr. being pressured to throw a fight, which he rejects. But afterwards, he is beaten to death by Falen’s goons, orphaning Matt, but pushing him to two goals: to become a lawyer to defend the less fortunate, but also becoming the crime-fighter alias, Daredevil. We shift to Matt as an adult, sleeping in a water coffin to guard against the sounds of the night, living cheaply and frugally as a lawyer. He fails to convict a man of rape, the guy getting off because of his status in contrast to the woman with a history of drug and alcohol abuse. His frustration is justified and he proceeds to take justice into his own hands later, Quesada (the man in question) falling onto the subway tracks and being summarily run over. An investigator into Daredevil’s urban legend, Ben Urich, reveals Daredevil’s interesting mark he leaves at the scenes of his “crimes”, overlapping D’s. Matt returns home to reveal his failing love life, which we’ll get into later. He goes to confessional, speaking to his priest about his being Daredevil, the priest reflecting that his path of violence is only going to hurt him in the end (also indicating he knows he is Daredevil). Matt and his partner Franklin run into an unknown woman whom Matt pursues. The two turn out to both be quite skilled fighters, Matt learning the woman’s name is Elektra Natchios. We shift to Kingpin, speaking with who appears to be Elektra’s father about business issues. Elektra and Matt hit it off after their fight and Kingpin sets a plan in motion to make Elektra’s father out to be the Kingpin. He also calls for the assassin Bullseye, an Irish expert in turning anything into a throwing weapon, including a paperclip and a peanut in two different situations. Meanwhile, Daredevil chases down another of Kingpin’s thugs, scaring the crap out of a kid in the process, Matt insisting he’s not the bad guy. The next day, Matt finds he’s been invited to a party at the hotel Elektra’s dad owns, but he insists he shouldn’t even bother going since she’s out of his league. He later meets Elektra and their relationship takes a turn for the better, no doubt motivating Matt to go to the ball. Though he is pressured by Elektra to stay with her even though the audience knows he hears a man being roughed up by Kingpin’s thugs elsewhere. At the party, Matt and his partner meet Wilson Fisk, the real Kingpin, but Matt’s adherence to his code of justice makes him something of an enemy already. Matt meets Elektra and the two speak on their relationship a bit, Elektra scared at how her meeting Matt seems too good to be true and Matt feeling bad that he can’t see Elektra all dressed up as she is. Bullseye obtains a motorcycle, while Kingpin puts a rose in Nikolaos Natchio’s breast pocket, indicating that he has been marked to be killed. He and Elektra leave Matt at the party. Bullseye finds the Natchios’ limo and takes out the drivers, fighting against Daredevil (missing for the first time) and then using Daredevil’s club to impale Elektra’s father, making Elektra think Daredevil murdered him as Bullseye gets away. Elektra meets Matt at the funeral and insists she must seek revenge, Matt pleading with her to stay with him and forget vengeance, which she rejects as she leaves. Ben Urich is shown that the Daredevil club recovered at the murder scene resembles Matt Murdock’s walking cane. Kingpin then sends Bullseye to kill Elektra, allowing him to kill Daredevil if he can as well. Ben Urich tells Matt that he thinks Natchios was set up by the real Kingpin, while elsewhere Elektra trains to kill Daredevil. Elektra ambushes Matt and eventually manages to overwhelm and injure him with one of her sai. After realizing she killed Matt, she is stunned. Then Bullseye shows up and begins to turn the tables, killing her with her own sai. Daredevil escapes and we shift to the scene from the opening as Bullseye bursts in to fight and kill Daredevil in the church. The two fight up the organ and into the upper belfry, where Bullseye uses stained glass shards as weapons after running out of his own supply. Daredevil is then disoriented by Bullseye striking one of the bells and causing other reverberations, also discovering that Fisk is the Kingpin but fate strikes as Bullseye’s hands are struck by a sniper’s bullet through Daredevil’s use of his radar vision, allowing Matt to knock him out of the top of the building onto a cop car. Elsewhere, Fisk tells his security to go home and prepares to fight Daredevil himself. Kingpin’s brutal style (created to take advantage of his size and strength) initially gives Matt a difficult time, but with creative use of the sprinkler system, he defeats Kingpin, disabling him by taking out his knees. Kingpin threatens to reveal his identity, but Daredevil retorts that he doubts he’d be bragging about getting beaten by a blind man. The next day, after leaving the coffee shop, Matt finds evidence that Elektra may still be alive. Also, Ben Urich reveals he knew Matt’s identity and leaves him to continue to protect the city, his alias safe.

Ben Affleck portrays Matt Murdock and Daredevil both very well. The attitude as a smooth talking lawyer raised in the slums is excellent and the Daredevil stunts, while not all done by a person (some in CG) are reminiscent of Spiderman’s moves. Jennifer Garner as Elektra is great as well, the depiction accessible to a non-comic audience with her attire adjusted, her personality and brutality from her training still maintained. Michael Clarke Duncan plays one of the two more controversial characters, Wilson Fisk/Kingpin. The original character is white and a bit more heavyset than Duncan, but I find that Duncan brings a good portrayal of what was his favorite character as a child. The important part of Kingpin is not his race so much as what he stands for, a heavyset businessman willing to go to blows to protect his reputation and economic status. Colin Farrell does Bullseye, another somewhat objectionable character in relation to comic canon. He had no Irish accent originally and the outfit was adjusted significantly, the bullseye on his forehead now an imprint/brand instead of part of his black full body suit from the comics. The insane demeanor and malice directed towards his targets is done just as well and I think that’s what’s important to his character. Joe Pantoliano does the minor character Ben Urich, who I feel has importance in a similar way that Detective Soap did to Frank Castle in Punisher Warzone, as a person who develops into a confidante for the character. Urich’s position as a reporter does differ from Soap’s, who is more in the police force than Urich, who is only indirectly involved, but he still stands out as a pseudo sidekick to the horned avenger.

One theme runs through the film: justice as blind and yet able to hear (as Matt puts it). The blindness of justice is reflected in Elektra’s character, that she seeks out revenge in a Punisher fashion and it gets her killed. The blindness of love is also part of this since Matt and Elektra would have been happy had the Kingpin and Bullseye not gotten involved. The whole tragedy of their romance is a subtheme in itself and a subplot that many find distracting. The director’s cut does have a subplot that I imagine delves more into the dark nature of Daredevil, but I’d have to look into that in the future. Justice being able to hear is reflected with Daredevil and his initial weakness to the various sounds, eventually maturing to be able to focus on particular sounds to find his targets and using the understanding he has of his radar sense to defeat Kingpin. The fact that he has to slowly understand that justice should not resort to killing people is also related to his premise that justice can hear even if she is blind. Initially we see Matt as heartless in his quest for justice as Daredevil, but slowly realizing that he must not become the bad guy or even appear as such. He must be firm against evil, but not resort to evil as it is. His Catholic background reflects on this in a sense with the popular understanding of Catholic exorcists as having understanding of evil, but not using evil to cast it out to use the Biblical turn of phrase.

All in all the film deserves a good rating, even if it doesn’t reflect the exact tone of the comics, which was close to Punisher without becoming excessively violent. Not to mention there is the masked aspect of this comic, making Daredevil a good comparison in Marvel to DC Comics’ Batman. The conformity to the canon of the comic is altered with regards to Matt’s father not being the indirect cause of Matt’s blindness, since in the comics Matt saved a blind man, which then initiated the spill of the radioactive substance in his eyes. There was also a subplot I read about involving Daredevil’s first girlfriend Karen Page, which was included in the Director’s cut in more detail. At least they did that, unlike in Spiderman where Gwen Stacy is cut out completely as a character. A decent 4 out of 5, because of the difficulty of really getting into this cut with the distractions of the romantic subplot and less emphasis on the crime-fighting as Daredevil, but still an 80% recommendation since it does introduce people to what is no doubt one of Marvel’s popular underdogs. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.