Also this issue: Back in Black Screenwriter Walter Bernstein sees a return to an “attempted blacklist.” -Sam Adams The Hard Cell Lockdown has prison grit, and some fine touches. -Cindy Fuchs New Continuing Screen Picks -Sam Adams Repertory Film Showtimes

February 13-19, 2003

movies

The Devil You Don't

Burn, baby, burn: Daredevil (Ben Affleck) gets fired up.

Daredevil is anything but a good time.

by Sam Adams

Mark Steven Johnson's experience as the director of the dreadful Simon Birch and the writer of Grumpy Old Men would hardly seem to make him a shoo-in for directing the latest big-budget Marvel Comics adaptation. The word from the entertainment press is that Johnson so desperately wanted to make the Daredevil movie he just kept hammering away until he got the gig. And that, in a way, is the problem. With its in-joke references to Marvel artists, a cameo by glory-hound Stan Lee and a bit part for Kevin Smith (who's recently taken a turn writing the comic), Daredevil is the comic-book geek movie par (lack of) excellence. Betraying few influences outside the realm of PlayStation, its unconvincing computer-generated vistas are dimly lit in a way that's meant to indicate grittiness or moral depth but suggest merely that someone forgot to pay the light bill. Despite the fact that it's a story about a blind man who's given amplified senses after being dunked in chemical waste, then decides to dress up in an oxblood leather suit and fight crime, the movie unfolds with the portentousness of a Sunday school class. The movie opens with our candy-colored crusader clinging fast to the cross atop a dingy church, then moves through a stained-glass window of the Madonna, whose eyes actually bleed as the camera moves past them. (Perhaps Abel Ferrara helped out on the visual effects.) Movies that are actually about Jesus don't take themselves this seriously.

Like Spider-Man, Daredevil demands a setting that appears to be seedy but is actually nostalgic -- one where the villains are colorful crimelords and self-advertising underworld types are so obviously criminals that even a blind man (heh) could see it. Like Spider-Man, the comic-book version of Daredevil tied his foes up and left them for the police; now he either dispatches them with bone-crunching force or maneuvers them into situations where the elements (or the C train) can finish them off. Aren't these things supposed to be fun?

Spider-Man worked, to the extent it did, because Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker was as convincing as his Spider-Man. As blind defense attorney Matt Murdock, Ben Affleck seems like he doesn't know how to spell "law," let alone practice it. When billionaire businessman (and not-so-secret baddie) Michael Clarke Duncan tries to engage Murdock's services, he retorts, "We only handle innocent clients." So justice really is blind.

Marvel's film unit may be riding high on Spider-Man's profits, and Daredevil may just be a shallow dip before The Hulk's guaranteed success, but Daredevil harks back to the days of such straight-to-video stinkers as Captain America and The Punisher. Put it this way: Here's a movie that establishes the fact that Colin Farrell's villainous Bullseye is Irish by introducing him drinking a Guinness with one hand, throwing darts with the other and listening to House of Pain. (The fact that he's not eating Lucky Charms can be counted as a small mercy.) What it most resembles are the pretentious, poorly-filmed Euroschlock imitations of American hits that inevitably flop at home and abroad. It's a wonder they bothered synching the dialogue.

Daredevil

Written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson A Fox release Opens Friday at area theaters