Reexamining 'Daredevil' (2003)

Reexamining 'Daredevil' (2003)

Most people would rather forget the 2003 film Daredevil, starring Ben Affleck in the title role, which isn't hard to do - it's a very forgettable film. Despite only having come out about 15 years ago, I realized as I recently re-watched it that there were films I saw over 30 years ago that I remember better than this one.

So when the questions comes up, "is it better or worse than you remember," the answer is yes. It's both.

First let's talk about what Daredevil does right. The first half hour of the film is actually quite good. The film opens with Daredevil already a fully fledged crime fighter, and his origin is rapidly, and effectively told in a flashback. There are some changes made to his origin story - instead of a radioactive canister flying by his face, it's a chemical spray from a ruptured drum that blinds him, and it doesn't fall off a truck, it's hit by a forklift swerving to avoid Matt himself who's running from where his father was acting as a mob enforcer on a dockyard. The whole sequence actually makes a lot more sense than even the original comic book version of Daredevil's origin, and it remains the best version of the story ever put to screen.

Other things Daredevil does well includes the red leather Daredevil costume, which is better than even the most recent Netflix Marvel's Daredevil TV series version; the excellent martial arts fight scenes (choreographed by some of the best specialists in Hong Kong film industry); and the excellent CGI representation of Daredevil's radar sense that allows the viewer to see the world as Daredevil "sees" it.

A special shout out needs to be given to the late Michael Clarke Duncan, who is the only actor that hasn't been miscast here. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that his portrayal of The Kingpin is better even than the more recent Vincent D'Onofrio small screen version, though he isn't given nearly as good material to work with, and barely any screen time to develop it. His swaggering hoodlum that started as a mob enforcer from the Bronx and worked his way to the top of New York's criminal underworld is again both faithful to, and an improvement upon the comics' Kingpin of Crime.

That brings up the casting, which is the first big problem with the film. As previously mentioned, nearly everyone here is miscast. While there's a lot of shade thrown toward Ben Affleck as Daredevil and while he's not ideal, he's not too bad either. His Matt Murdock is actually kind of believable - good looking, charming, exactly the kind of guy you think of when you think of an Ivy League New York frat boy turned lawyer. It's the rest of the supporting cast that's wrong. Joe Pantoliano seems lost in the role of Ben Urich; Ellen Pompeo might've been a good Karen Page, but we don't really know as she's given exactly one line in the whole film; and Jennifer Garner is so unlike the assassin Elektra as to be laughable. Other parts seem to have been doled out to people's buddies like Jon Favreau and Kevin Smith. And then there's Bullseye...

Bullseye was always one of the most interesting Daredevil villains, a former Major League Baseball pitcher whose sole superpower was the ability to turn nearly any object into a lethal weapon due to his knowledge of anatomy and deadly accurate pitching arm - the ultimate silent but deadly assassin. But in this film he's an Irish blabbermouth with a bullseye scar on his forehead played by Colin Farrell who mugs his way through the entire film in a cringe-worthy performance every time he's on screen. As soon as he shows up the film goes completely off the rails.

But casting isn't even the biggest problem with the film. It seems like 20th Century Fox wanted their own version of Tim Burton's Batman, and would stop at nothing to get it. There is a needless and intrusive gothic style imposed on the proceedings with Murdock living in a gargoyle-encrusted penthouse and sleeping in a coffin (yes, really). At one point during a climactic battle inside a church, a flock of bats flies out of a pipe organ for no good reason but to distract the bad guy at a crucial moment. 

The twin problems of under-developed script and over-edited final cut result in a disjointed film where characters just show up for fights as if they had been pre-arranged on "X" rooftop at "Y" hour. Little attention is given to Daredevil alter ego Matt Murdock's role as defense attorney of Hell's Kitchen's underprivileged. The whole thing comes off as the bland, forgettable action movie that's representative of everything that was wrong with comic book movies prior to 2008 (The year The Dark Knight and Iron Man came out).

The good news is that there's a Director's Cut of the film widely available on DVD and Blu-Ray that goes a long way toward addressing some of these problems. There's an entire subplot involving Nelson and Murdock defending a murder suspect that adds mystery and courtroom drama, the awkward love scenes between Matt and Elektra are removed, and the overall tone is darker and more violent. The bad news is that even this much improved Director's Cut can't completely redeem the film. It's no longer awful, but it's still largely forgettable.