DAREDEVIL: How Do You Kill A Man Without Fear?

Daredevil (2003; Director’s Cut) – Directed by Mark Steven Johnson – Starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Colin Farrell, Michael Clarke Duncan, Jon Favreau, Joe Pantoliano, David Keith, Leland Orser, Erick Avari, Ellen Pompeo, Derrick O’Connor, Jude Ciccolella, Kevin Smith, Frank Miller, and Stan Lee.

If you haven’t seen the Director’s Cut of DAREDEVIL, then you haven’t seen DAREDEVIL, because the Director’s Cut is thisclose to being included among the best of all the Marvel movies.

When the theatrical release hit theaters back in 2003, I went and watched it, and kinda liked it. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t think it was bad, and I didn’t think many of the arrows people were slinging at the film were fair: the costume, the water coffin, the fact that Michael Clarke Duncan is black. I never thought the costume was a major drawback, I thought the water coffin was actually a decent idea, and I’m much more interested in actors getting the spirit of a character than I am concerned with nailing the look.

There were other problems with the theatrical cut, however, as the emphasis on the Elektra (Jennifer Garner) subplot turned DAREDEVIL into a more traditional superhero movie and robbed the film of what made Daredevil unique. I don’t think alteration of source material is, in and of itself, a bad thing, and Daredevil has, at various stages in his comic book life, been portrayed in a more traditionally superheroic sense, so it’s not the portrayal itself that bothers me, but that in doing so, it put DAREDEVIL in the company of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Bryan Singer’s X-Men and X2, and in comparison to those films, Mark Steven Johnson’s theatrical take on the Man Without Fear fell short.

The Director’s Cut, however, offers a darker, more serious, more unique superhero story, and is much better for it. We’ve become so accustomed to movie studios slapping “Director’s Cut” on DVDs and Blu-rays where the movie isn’t noticeably different than the theatrical cut that we’ve almost become inoculated to the idea that the Director’s Cut could be something significantly different, and DAREDEVIL’s Director’s Cut is a definite and significant improvement. Because the film had a lukewarm reception on its release, the film has slipped through the cracks a bit, and the release of the Director’s Cut hasn’t fully impacted the cultural perception of this movie, and as a result I am pretty comfortable in saying that the Director’s Cut of DAREDEVIL currently stands as the most under-appreciated superhero movie ever made.

I love DAREDEVIL, and the reasons why it falls just short of the very best superhero movies is the execution of the idea in several spots, and not the idea, itself.

How could DAREDEVIL has been just that little bit better? Ben Affleck could be who he is now, as an actor, instead of who he was then. Colin Farrell could have toned down Bullseye’s kewl and been more the driven killer that he is in the second half of the movie. Mark Steven Johnson could have had his movie shot with a little more grit and a little less slick. And Jennifer Garner …

I am not a totally unkind person, and if doing this movie is where Affleck and Garner fell in love … well, if the trade off for love is a bad performance, then that is a small price to pay. But it doesn’t alter my belief that Garner’s performance here is simply not very good, and the de-emphasis of her character in the longer Director’s Cut helps to make DAREDEVIL a better film.

DAREDEVIL opens in the present, with a busted up Daredevil clinging to the cross on top of a church. He lowers himself in and the cathedral’s priest (Derrick O’Connor) offers him some comfort before we drop into an extended flashback that gives us Matt Murdock’s origin as a child. As anyone who’s been reading these reviews knows, I’m not overly fond of origin stories, yet the presentation here is exceedingly well done. What helps is that the story of young Matt (Scott Terra) is a self-contained story about a boy, his dad, and a fateful decision by the father to buck the mob. David Keith is excellent as Jack Murdock, a down on his luck fighter that’s been working for the mob as an enforcer. When Matt catches him roughing someone up, he runs away and gets blinded by radioactive chemicals. Father and son make a bond with each other to start attacking life, and this thread ends with Jack refusing to throw a fight, which gets him killed.

It’s a concisely told, effectively rendered short story at the beginning of the film, and it does an excellent job setting not only the violent tone for what follows, but also demonstrates there’s a real consequence to people’s actions.

Cut to the near present where the bulk of the film takes place. We don’t return to the moment in the church that we left and the film doesn’t end on that moment, either. Now, that’s not a huge break in chronology, but it helps to give DAREDEVIL a little something extra in the presentation of the narrative.

The primary difference between the Director’s Cut and the theatrical cut is the inclusion of a subplot that features Coolio and Jude Ciccolella. While it doesn’t dramatically alter the film because of how it enhances the scenes that made the theatrical cut, it adds to the overall tone of the film by having an honest-to-goodness legal subplot. No longer is Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson bit players in Daredevil’s film, but they’re actual characters in the larger story. It’s important to see the Matt persona at work, as it increases the tension between what he does as a member of the Court and what he does as a vigilante. With all of these extra legal scenes put into the narrative, we get a much greater sense of Matt’s frustrations with the legal system.

There’s a fantastic scene between Matt and Officer McKensie where Matt loses it. He uses his increased sense of hearing to help determine if people are lying by listening to their heartbeat, and he’s frustrated at how both his client (Coolio) and the main witness against him (Ciccolella) are telling different versions of the same story, yet both appear to be telling the truth. Matt goes after McKensie, but as Matt and not Daredevil. The officer is obviously confused about being roughed up by the blind attorney, but after Matt bangs up his car and rips open McKensie’s shirt, he sees a scar that tells him the cop has a pacemaker, and thus his heartbeat wouldn’t be affected by lying.

It’s good stuff and it shows the failing of a superpower, something that’s not often done unless it’s a total breakdown in powers. This isn’t that; instead, Matt’s powers are in full effect, but they fail him because he’s become over-reliant on them. It’s a small touch but it adds a nice sense of pathos to the film without taking control of the narrative.

At a coffee shop one morning, Matt and Foggy (Jon Favreau) are having their morning jolt, arguing about the alleged veracity of Daredevil and giant alligators in the sewers of New York. There’s great chemistry between Favreau and Affleck, and one of the film’s better touches is how Foggy will try to lie and trick Matt by using Matt’s blindness against him, suck as when he tricks Matt into dumping mustard into his coffee. The trick is on Foggy, of course, as Matt is fully aware of what his friend is trying to pull, and when the opportunity presents itself in the arrival of Elektra Natchios (Garner), Matt switches their cups so Foggy gets the mustard blend.

Matt decides to try his hand at flirting with Elektra, who’s not having any of it. Matt pursues her down the street, where they engage in some painful banter and then do a much more effective form of banter when they start punching and kicking each other over a kid’s playground. On the whole, the scene doesn’t work for me, but what does work is that it’s nice to see that Matt has a life outside of being Daredevil. And yeah, he’s not good at personal relationships, but there’s a genuine spark of life when he goes after Elektra. He’s not doing this as cover, but because he likes chasing after a pretty lady.

Good for him, and good for including that in this film. Mark Steven Johnson doesn’t appear to have any delusions of grandeur here, nor any shame in directing a superhero movie; he’s just trying to tell the very best Daredevil story he can tell.

Matt’s life is interrupted when the Kingpin (Duncan) hires Irish assassin Bullseye (Farrell) to kill Elektra’s dad, who wants out of the criminal business. Bullseye kills Elektra’s dad with Daredevil’s billy club/walking stick/grappling hook, which gets Elektra to think that Daredevil is to blame. With her father dead, Elektra does what every daughter would do in this situation: she goes home, puts on some tight leather, sets up some sandbags, arms herself with a pair of sais, cuts open the sandbags as she’s twirling and kicking around the room, and then goes after Daredevil.

DD, of course, doesn’t want to fight her, but that doesn’t stop Elektra from jamming a sai through his left shoulder, which causes Daredevil to do one of those slow slides down the wall. Matt decides now is the time to pull off his mask (because doing it before would have been silly), and Elektra instantly realizes that Daredevil couldn’t possibly be responsible because … because they made out? … and then Bullseye shows up and kills her. We get a really nice scene of Daredevil and Elektra crawling towards each other as the police move up through the building, and it’s one of the few scenes between them that really works.

The action sequences in the film are solid without being exceptional, though I really like how the film depicts Matt’s radar sense (though I would have gone with a dark red echo effect instead of blue to better fit the film’s color scheme). I do like how Johnson takes advantage of his locations – there’s a fight on the rooftops and another inside a church – but he’s not very adept at showing people punching and kicking each other. The film uses some special effects to make the three principals jump higher and stuff and it looks really silly. Daredevil, Elektra, and Bullseye don’t need to be able to jump to a rooftop no one else can get to in order to be awesome. They’re already/always awesome.

Matt defeats Bullseye in the church fight and then goes after the Kingpin. Duncan is really good as the Kingpin; maybe it’s not the pure Wilson Fisk we’ve seen in the comics, but I love that he’s standing over this film, casting a huge shadow before entering the film as a real physical force in the final act. His dismissive line to his assistant that, “I was raised in the Bronx. This is something you wouldn’t understand,” as he readies himself for Daredevil’s arrival tells us more about the character than all the posturing ever could, just as Matt’s conflict over his Catholicism tells us he feels guilty about his actions as Daredevil much more effectively than him weakly telling a scared kid that, “I’m not the bad guy” ever could.

I really love the Director’s Cut of DAREDEVIL. While just short of that ultimate tier of Marvel films, this is an exceptionally good movie. It’s still a little too slick and the acting isn’t what it needs to be, but this darker DAREDEVIL is an under-appreciated and important superhero movie.

TOTAL RECALL (2012): I Give Good Wife

Total Recall (2012) – Directed by Len Wiseman – Starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, Bokeem Woodbine, John Cho, and Bill Nighy.

Are you new here – then be aware, SPOILERS LIE AHEAD. LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS, so if you don’t want the movie SPOILED, stop reading.

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Len Wiseman’s TOTAL RECALL is one of those films that just sort of exists.

It is not a bad movie, but it is not a great movie, either, and the result is a film that’s technically proficient without ever being spectacularly memorable. Wiseman directs a decent action sequence, but RECALL is a joyless chase film that’s mildly entertaining without being the least bit engaging.

I feel a bit bad bagging on a film like TOTAL RECALL because I paid my money, ate my popcorn, and for the most part enjoyed what I was watching. There’s a few times when the film lags, but I was largely impressed with how the film looked and moved. I just wanted more. I wanted to be drawn into this world and drawn into this story and these characters and I just wasn’t. The narrative is very robotic and predictable, and not predictable because this is a remake of the original TOTAL RECALL, but predictable because I’ve seen action movies before.

I wish Wiseman would get handed a great script because I think he could deliver a really great action film, but all of his previous action films are really just okay and nothing more. Technically, they’re fine, but emotionally, they’re flat.

One big problem with this movie is that, much like the original RECALL, the narrative wants the audience to be thinking, “Is what I’m watching real, or is it all a Rekall fantasy?” and just like the original RECALL the answer is obvious moments after Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell here, Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original) sits in the chair and gets his injection. In the original, Quaid gets a scratch on his neck that disappears once the injection goes wrong, and here Quaid gets a stamp put on his arm that disappears just as fast.

How fast? We see the stamp, the injection goes wrong, a bunch of officers show up with guns, Quaid puts his arms up behind his head and … no stamp.

Making it completely obvious right up front does take a bit away from the rest of the movie. It’s not enough to ruin it – I can still watch The Wizard of Oz and The Usual Suspects after learning at the end of those films that most of what we’ve just seen is a made up story inside the story – but it does make all of the “stop the action so we can debate the authenticity of this experience” moments a bit tedious. Paul Verhoeven had the decency to make his movie fun, but Wiseman has no desire to include humor. There’s literally only one moment in the whole film where I chuckled. It’s in the middle of one of the 857 big action sequences and Quaid and Melina (Jessica Biel) have just dropped into an elevator.

“Is this going down?” Quaid asks of the stunned riders.

One chuckle.

One.

I’m not going to spend much time discussing the differences between the Wiseman and Verhoeven films because the amount of fun generated in both films is the biggest difference. Let’s focus on the Wiseman film:

Doug Quaid lives in Australia (The Colony) and works in a factory in England (The United Federation of Britain). The rest of the world is a poisoned wasteland. How does Quaid get to work every day? Via the Fall, a big, honking gravity elevator that cuts through the planet. Doug has dreams about running away from cops with Jessica Biel. (Fittingly, these dreams are nightmares.) Doug is married to Lori (Kate Beckinsale), who tries to convince him that he should be happy. Even though their life together hasn’t turned out exactly as they dreamed, she’s still the most gorgeous woman on the planet and that has to count for something, right? (Note – that may not be exactly what she said, but that’s what I heard.) I’m not sure why it makes sense for Doug to visit Rekall and have fake memories implanted in his head when he’s having nightmares, except that these dreams leave him with the feeling that he should be doing something more with his life.

His work pal Harry (Bokeem Woodbine) plays the class card and wants to know if Doug thinks being a factory worker is something to be ashamed of, and Doug says No (though he means Yes), and then goes and visits Rekall, where John Cho implants the spy program in his body. Then everything goes “wrong,” meaning that Doug gets the exact experience he’s paying for, but he doesn’t have any fun because he decided to be a double spy instead of being a guy married to Kate Beckinsale.

Once things start to go bad, TOTALL RECALL simply becomes a lesser version of The Bourne Identity. Doug is on the run, trying to figure out what’s going on and who he really is, and he teams up with one woman as the government chases him. It’s not as skillfully made as Bourne is, and there’s a real herky-jerky quality to the film: everybody hurries up to do a bunch of shooting and running, then the narrative stops so Doug can find something that advances the plot, then everyone hurries back to the running and shooting.

After things go wrong at Rekall and Doug returns home, Lori decides it’s time to attack him and bring him in. So they fight. And fight. And run. And fight. And jump. And shoot. And fight. It’s a very good action sequence, first in their apartment and then through the rooftop streets of the Colony. (The Colony and UFB are elevated regions, so there’s multiple layers to the city’s layout.) I do feel it goes on a bit too long – in an action sequence you should never be wondering, “When is this going to end?” – but it’s good stuff.

None of the actors here have an abundance of personality and that hurts the film, too. Farrell, Beckinsale, and Biel are all good, but they don’t move me. I’m never on Doug’s side here. I’m not rooting for him. And not just because I’m rooting for Beckinsale, either, but because I just don’t care about Doug’s plight. One, I know that within the confines to the story his experience is a fake, and two, he’s a nice guy but not a compelling guy. Farrell has a sense of humor and I would have liked to see more of that put into the film.

And by “more,” I mean, “any.”

The best chemistry in the film comes between Beckinsale and Biel, and I wish we would have gotten more with the two of them going at it instead of Doug serving as the meddling third wheel. Farrell is a much better actor than Schwarzenegger, but he’s not a more fun actor to watch, and the script here doesn’t take advantage of Farrell’s talents. I think RECALL perhaps reveals why it will be so hard to reboot Scwarzenneger’s films – the man might not be a good actor, but he’s a huge personality. It’s tough to find actors who can shine that brightly

RECALL isn’t a very deep film. There’s a decent backdrop of politics, with the rich UFB government manipulating a war against the poor Colony workforce, but it’s all handled with the skill of a butcher using a chainsaw. There’s a good visual look to the cities, and plenty of well-executed action sequences (especially the magnetic car chase). All the actors do what they can with the roles they’ve been given, but the roles are all rather simple.

TOTAL RECALL can never escape that sense that it’s just a poor copy of other films and stories.

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And if you like good sci-fi action stories with strong female leads, please check out my 2011 novel,HARPSICHORD AND THE WORMHOLE WITCHES.

Harpsichord & the Wormhole Witches. The First Novel of the Deep. Now Available at Amazon.com in Paperback. From Atomic Anxiety Press.

FRIGHT NIGHT: You Don’t Need an Invitation if There Isn’t a House

Fright Night (2011) – Directed by Craig Gillespie – Starring Colin Farrell, Anton Yelchin, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, David Tennant, Imogen Poots, Toni Collette, Lisa Loeb, and Chris Sarandon.

FRIGHT NIGHT is a highly enjoyable vampire romp about a kid who discovers his neighbor is a vampire and then kills him. It’s really not much more complicated than that, but FRIGHT NIGHT isn’t trying to be anything other than a good time.

There’s two reasons why FRIGHT NIGHT works. The first is that while this isn’t a super-smart script, it’s a highly competent one. Penned by Buffy the Vampire Slayer vet Marti Noxon, FRIGHT tells a simple story exceedingly well. Director Craig Gillespie executes the script, and paces FRIGHT so that you’re never anywhere longer than you need to be. The movie hums along with plenty of speed and precision, and that brings me to the second reason this movie is so much fun:

The actors.

Colin Farrell, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and David Tennant are great here, all of them managing to be both over-the-top and grounded, which gives FRIGHT NIGHT just enough of a foundation to make the story work.

Charley (Anton Yelchin) is a kid in high school who used to be a dweeb but is now cool enough to score a hot girlfriend, Amy (Imogen Poots). He doesn’t want anything to do with his still dweeby former best friend Ed (Mintz-Plasse), especially when Ed tries to tell him that all of the missing people in town have been killed by a vampire.

A vampire that lives right next door to Charley and goes by the name of Jerry (Farrell).

Jerry has recently moved in next door and Ed has figured out that all of the disappearances are his fault. Charley is a dick to Ed because he has a hot girlfriend, and that’s what you do when you have a hot girlfriend. Ed blackmails him into going to check out one of their friend’s houses and they find nothing, but when Ed heads home, he runs into Jerry, who munches on his neck.

With Ed dead, Charley decides to investigate. Jerry tries to weasel his way into Charley’s home (vamps aren’t allowed inside without an invitation) by borrowing beer, but Charley won’t ask him to come in, so Jerry has to hover at the doorway. I give total credit to Noxon and Gillespie for getting us to this scene quickly; FRIGHT NIGHT doesn’t muck around with lots of “is he or isn’t he a vampire” nonsense. Jerry’s a vampire and once he realizes Charley is on to him, it’s on. FRIGHT isn’t a vamp version of Rear Window, where there’s all this speculation and clue dropping. The film quickly gets to what we want to see, which is Charley vs. Jerry.

The presence of a vampire next door has Charley so worried he’s not interested in fooling around with Amy. That this comes off as the most unbelievable part of the movie shows how solid a script we’re dealing with. Jerry has invited a neighborhood hottie (Emily Montague) over for the night and Charley is all flustered about it. Amy doesn’t see what the big deal is: “He’s hot and she’s a stripper,” she tells Charley. “They were bound to find each other.”

“She’s a go-go dancer,” Charley corrects, though Amy doesn’t think there’s a real difference.

It’s moderately sharp dialogue like that back-and-forth that helps to make FRIGHT NIGHT such an enjoyable ride.

When Jerry leaves, Charley breaks into Jerry’s house and finds all kinds of weird stuff, including a hallway of rooms where Jerry keeps his victims, including the go go dancer. Charley witnesses Jerry feeding on her, and then helps her escape, only to watch her sizzle and explode when the sun hits her. It’s at this moment that FRIGHT NIGHT won me over – Charley does the heroic thing and it ends up that he causes the woman’s death.

The movie quickly moves to Jerry’s attack on Charley and his mom (Toni Collette), and he partially blows up their house to flush them out, which leads to a pretty good chase sequence on the highway, which includes a cameo by one of the stars of the original FRIGHT NIGHT, Chris Sarandon.

To get help, Charley scams an interview with Peter Vincent (David Tennant), a magician-slash-vampire expert. Tennant is a blast playing a big shot magician who’s completely disrespected by the women who work for him, and it turns out he’s a fraidy cat. He’s got this huge collection of vampire killing equipment, but when Vampire Ed and Jerry crash his place, he hides in a panic room and leaves the vamp fighting to Charley and Amy. In this Vegas casino sequence, Jerry ends up turning Amy, and Charley demands that Peter help him. Peter’s like, “Um, no. I’m a coward,” so Charley goes off on his own. Only to have Peter show up to help for the final battle sequence, which takes place in Jerry’s basement. There was way more David Tennant in the film that I was expecting, and he’s solid throughout.

What’s really impressive about FRIGHT NIGHT is just how much everything works – the action scenes are good, the humor is good, the script is tight, the music and cinematography are first notch and the actors all look like they’re having a good time without disrespecting the material. I don’t want to overstate how good FRIGHT NIGHT is because it’s not like this movie is going to change cinema, but if you need to shut your brain down for a bit, FRIGHT NIGHT is a rather tasty snack.