Film Summary CCCXXVI (DareDevil)

How much does this movie cost? A dollar. Okay I'll buy it, why not. I got nothing better to do.

So I've been having this back-and-forth debate with a friend of mine for years about the Daredevil movie being any good. They claim that it's a fun film, I remember it being kind of horrible. So now I'm sitting here about to watch the thing praying that my friend is actually correct.
However theirs a question that popped into my head.
Did anybody care about Daredevil before this film came out? You talk about the X-Men, Iron Man or even Captain America and people kind of got what you were blabbing about.
But I feel as if nobody had ever actually heard of Daredevil before this. The only reference I had too him came from a 1998 Spiderman video game.

So the Daredevil is played by everyone's favourite commercially viable duck Ben Aflac*. The man who played every other comic book character.


We start with little tiny Ben Affleck who's Palin around with his father (a washed-up boxer). Then he discovers that his father's working for a bunch of thugs, drama ensues and the boy ends up blind. For some reason his Blindness make em into a magic wizard, ninja man. Now he can fight people with skills comparable to that of Spider-Man.

That's the big question I have here. Does this film want to be Batman or Spider-Man?
The Daredevil has all those little gadgets and he runs around in the dark like Batman. But then you see him jumping over walls and jumping from the roof off the two-story building on to the ground and he's perfectly fine, And well that's a lot more Spider-Man.

There's this one weird journalist who's trying to figure out who Daredevil is and he wears a trench coat and a horrible-looking hat. He does that thing where he throws his cigarette onto an oil stain in the C-train station. It spells out the letters for Daredevil. Now I don't care that the word Daredevil was there in gasoline. It's a superhero movie, you can have silly stuff like that, much like how the Punisher had a big old skull in a parking lot. But if I'm the guy who's leading this investigation for the police the first thing I do is arrest that journalist for interfering with a crime investigation.

Now we get to the cringiest part of the movie. The Daredevil Guy meets up with this girl he's interested in (Electra**) and the two of them have this little conversation / fight next to a basketball court.
It's a little embarrassing to watch. There's just something about how they film it and how they have the two people interacting with each other, that comes off in this incredibly corny and ridiculous way. Then you compare that with the scene that comes right afterwards. Which is Michael Duncan standing in front of his large window on the top floor of his Mega building, chomping on a cigar talking about how great it is to be the world's greatest Mafia Don.
This scene is corny too. But it's played so much better. Part of that is just simply down to Michael Duncan. The man who's able to bring Charisma to any role he plays.
I'll say one thing; Michael Duncan as the Kingpin is one of the greatest decisions they ever made. He plays the role so well.

I wish more of the movie was revolving around him. But instead we get this guy called  Bulls-Eye. This cocky little Irish dude who apparently can throw things really well. There's a hilarious bit where they're introduce him. He's throwing darts at a board and as the camera zooms out we eventually see the man. But here's the funny thing. As the cameras zooming out you can tell that the darts are being thrown by a second person some two feet to the right of where Bulls-eye is standing.
Unfortunately this guy is our main antagonist. Which I wouldn't be all that bothered by if we were introduced to him before Michael Duncan. Because now all I want is the Kingpin.
You don't show somebody a piece of chocolate cake and then tell them afterwards that they're getting a box of Smarties.
Now at some point Bulls-eye will kill Electra's father. She'll think it was Daredevil. Even though she should have seen the two of them were fighting in front of her for a good three minutes.

So I guess the journalist figured out who the Daredevil really was. But instead of writing a story up on him or investigating further he just decides to tell the Daredevil that the Kingpin might kill him and his family. And at this stage the only family he has is some random chick who decides that she's going to become her own Kung Fu Warrior.

There's a scene where Electra is trying to shoot the Daredevil after assuming that he killed her father. And she shoots this little pea-gun about 14 times. Now I'm not a person who cares if there's one extra bullet in a gun or if you didn't reload it properly. Small inconsistencies can be forgiven. But 14 shots! That's a little much.
The last half of this movie becomes overly silly. And yet the pacing doesn't pick up all that much. Somehow it's more action-packed but no more interesting than the first half.

So I've been trying to give this movie the benefit of the doubt and not rip on the CGI the whole time. And admittedly it was doing okay up to a point. Especially in the more dark scenes with a camera was allowed to lean in and out. The Daredevil always look like he was Spider-Man but at least he didn't look all that bad. But then we come to the final fight between him Bullseye. The CG is just noticeably awful. They're inside this church leaning on a pipe organ and it's just the worst. I make no word of a lie it remind me of those pre-made cut scenes in late PS2 era video games. Think something like Killzone 2 or maybe the First 'Call of Duty' that came out on the Xbox 360. The games themselves look quite nice but when you compare them to real life models. Well you can tell the difference pretty easily.


And while we're on the topic of Spider-Man. There are scenes in this movie that are direct rip off some of Spider-Man swinging and fight choreography. Especially one of the scenes near the end where Bullseye start throwing shards of glass at Daredevil. He's flipping about avoiding each one the whole time. It looks almost identical to Peter Parker dodging pumpkin bombs that are being thrown by the Green Goblin.
Then we get to the final confrontation, Daredevil versus the Kingpin. It has a decent little setup and it's fun for the first two minutes were Kingpin is just tossing Daredevil around like a rag-doll.
Michael Duncan in this movie is huge. He's built like a giant Brick House and unfortunately the fight doesn't last long enough. His knees get kicked in and he's defeated relatively easily. and even the ending of this entertaining fight is made corny when Daredevil realizes that the water in the walls around him is somehow symbolic of his now-dead love interests. The girl Electra would been killed earlier by bullseye. So thanks for that Daredevil you made the only fight in the second half of your movie seemed really stupid.

For years I always thought the Stinger scene was Kingpin in the hospital being treated in the Intensive Care Unit. But it's not a Kingpin, it's just Bullseye again. Setting him up for the some crappy Cliffhanger that will never come to me.

Conclusion:

Daredevil was a movie I was hoping to like. I wanted to enjoy for what it was. And for the first 30 or so minutes this was true. I could put up with little things like the wonky CGI or the awkward conversations between people this film ends up dying around the same time as Elektra's father.  Unfortunately Michael Duncan isn't it enough to keep it afloat. My recommendations, look up the Michael Duncan scenes on YouTube and then watch the original Sam Raimi Spider-Man. Because that's what this movie wants to be. It wants the heart, the fun and the love of Spider-Man mixed with the slightly dark atmosphere of a good Batman flick.

I was hoping not to bring music up when talking about this film. Every movie has a hit song in it. Especially if they're made by Hollywood studio. And that's an okay thing. Everybody's entitled to one cheesy pop hit. But the second you start having more than one Evanescence song in your movie
Well now you're just begging to be made fun of.

*Yeah I know the guys name is Ben Affleck but I just can't say his name without envisioning that duck.

**I don't know how prominent Elektra is in the comic books themselves. I assume she's a real character. She must have some importance. she even got her own movie after this one.
Really I'm more interested in her back story that I am Daredevils. She just comes out of nowhere and she magically knows kung fu. She even tells Daredevil that she had different apprentices teaching her martial arts while she grew up. And they never bring up any of this stuff again. They simply state that they didn't want her to be the victim. Well come on then! Let's have a little fun with it, say she's a ninja assassin or somebody. Who had to escape from a life of misery. Give us something.