It’s been a while since we looked at a cheesy comic book movie. So let’s fix that! In fact, let’s look at a couple—both coming out twenty years ago in those halcyon days of the early 2000s, when suggesting you slap nu-metal onto everything did not in fact have people look at you funny, and when you needed only answer ‘yes’ to the question ‘how much leather’?
First up is Daredevil, fresh off the wake of the X-Men and Spider-Man entries, and with Ben Affleck seemingly recovered from the traumatic ordeal that was the movie Pearl Harbor. For better or worse, before all things Marvel were under one large tent, you could take all kinds of turns with these films—and our titular character was an interesting one to look at. With Matt Murdoch here was the fact that he was blind, but in a way that heightened all his other senses—it was a bit of disability positivity that you still don’t really see that often. He also happened to be a superhero that fought for justice beyond just clobbering random muggers by being a lawyer, with all the equally arduous struggles that come with that—so between action in alleyways and courtroom dramas, you could go all kinds of ways with this one.
Well…director Mark Steven Johnson did seem to try. You’ll note immediately that this is another film we can depressingly see as ‘early 2000s as hell’—there’s all the sudden rapid pans for transitions, there’s the inexplicable green filter we have early on because hey Matrix did that. And of course, everything is as intense to the point of hilarity as possible—Daredevil’s super-senses are so good he essentially might as well have sight, unless he gets disorientated by a passing train, yet equally loud vehicular noises seem to be fine, but whatever. He even has time to mark his sigil in gasoline on a random train platform, on the off chance someone just so happens to throw a match over there--what a guy.
Affleck seems to also trying…sort of? It’s admittedly more of a challenge than you might think to convincingly play a blind person, always remembering not to make eye contact nor actively read something, but there’s something phoned in going on for a lot of it. Thankfully, that’s not universal here—Jon Favreau, the future Marvel helm ironically, is quite fun as Murdoch’s much less philanthropic attorney partner, and I’ll even admit, I actually liked Michael Clarke Duncan as our antagonist Kingpin. He undeniably has the physique, and he even has amiability to feel like someone that the city could actually buy as a friendly businessman.
And then we get to Colin Farrell as henchman Bullseye. He’s an assassin who’s very, very good at throwing things. He is in fact, such a good assassin, that he even tattoos a bullseye onto his head, and thinks that hurtling at your target atop a motorcycle is a perfect way to not end up in a hilarious accident. Despite everything about him being so silly, Colin at least has the grace to realize this, and wastes not a frame of screen in simply not giving a crap—it’s wonderful.
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| I do believe that this subtle moment of thespianism is exhibiting the verisimilitude of a character called Bullseye, who has a bullseye. There's, like, deep layers of irony there, or something. |
Shame about the general story though. We have a love interest with Jennifer Gardner as Elektra, daughter of a Greek bigshot—and because this was made in the early 2000s, we could still have our hero express his amor by obsessively following and harassing her, right down to a hysterics-inducing ‘fight’ in a playground. Elektra’s father ends up being killed by Kingpin, setting up her own subplot…that goes nowhere because she dies abruptly. And then it’s basically all about Murdoch summoning the courage to beat the snot out of Michael Clarke Duncan, because why not. They did give Elektra her own poorly received spin-off film in the end though, that absolutely nobody remembers, or seems to want to remember.
Oh yeah, there’s the soundtrack. Once again, ‘early 2000s as hell’. We have, for instance, Bullseye being introduced by House of Pain’s ‘Top o’ the Morning To Ya’, because, you see, he’s Irish, get it. And then, right in the middle, we have that one that sums up a lot of the scene around this time, one that’s been meme-ed and parodied to hell and back—you know the one:
“Wake meeeeee up inside!
Because this song puts me to sleep!
Save me from this whining!
Before I get an an-eu-rrrrrysm!
Mwehhh, weehhhh, wehhhh, weh weeeehhhh!!!”
Okay, fine, I don’t hate Evanescence that much, but don’t act like you don’t know what I mean!
But yeah. Honestly, all over the place as it is, I’ll admit there is still stuff to enjoy around here, even if you have to approach it as something fumbling about trying to do everything at once. A decade or so later Marvel returned to the character with its Netflix version, which you can say did what this film was trying to do but better…but that seems to have been left by the wayside, or maybe it hasn’t, I’m not quite sure any more. Either way, I file this one under as ‘entertaining if you have some beers and some pals who still remember the goth-metal scene’—let’s move to the next and see if it makes that cut at least…
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