Comic-Book Movie: Daredevil Review

Daredevil (Ben Affleck) is a masked crime fighter who was blinded at a young age, but has had his other senses enhanced. He can hear a pin drop from a mile away. A few years ago Daredevil was brought to the big screen, and the minds of hollywood tried their best to tell an exciting, action packed origin but this seemed to just include ramming special effects down your throat.



Unfortunately, a mediocre story doesn't help matters. Daredevil is the protector of Hell's Kitchen, a town in America, where crime is everywhere. He finds out that all the crime in the city is linked together by one person, known as the Kingpin, who has hired the assassin, Bullseye to kill an old business partner of his. But Bullseye ends up staying to kill Daredevil too.

Meanwhile, Matt Murdock (Daredevil) meets Elektra, who might as well not even be in this film. For those who don't know, Elektra is a ninja assassin who is supposed to be a total badass. Now, don't get me wrong, in this film she does do a bit of fighting, but is generally made quite weak in comparison to Daredevil, who does some truly ridiculous things in the climax of the story. Had the script accompanied some more space for a Daredevil-Elektra team-up this would have been much better.
The script does however provide some quite funny dialogue between Matt and Foggy, (who is his co-worker).

One of the most annoying things about this film is it tries to be too comic-book-y. I never thought there was such a thing, but the fight scenes are way too over the top-and with the awful special effects it makes them almost unwatchable. There is the odd moment where the effects look quite cool, but this is rare.
And the effects are everywhere - there's no getting away from them. There in the fight scenes, the action scenes, the romantic scenes, they even seem to make up most of Hell's Kitchen! This is intolerable, as even though this movie is now 8 years old, other films released at the time (e.g. Spiderman, X-Men) proved that good effects were possible. So why weren't they used in this film?

I also found the acting to be quite average. Colin Farrell as Bullseye was just very annoying. Bullseye is meant to be a bit crazy, but Farrell just wasn't very well suited in my opinion. I also want to point out my hatred of Bullseye's appearance in this film. The costume department managed to get Daredevil's look, but Bullseye's costume was replaced by a leather jacket/coat. That really sucked. Although they did manage to get his trademark, target shaped scar(?) on his forehead.

Jennifer Garner just wasn't strong enough to fit the aforementioned Elektra's shoes. Elektra is one of the most dangerous women in the Marvel Universe, especially when it comes to one-on-one combat, and I just don't think Garner could pull off such a character.
She and Ben Affleck manage to strike little chemistry in the scenes that are meant to be romantic, but are instead just slightly cringeworthy.

All in all, I leave Daredevil with feelings of disappointment. Had a bit more effort been put into casting, effects and script this could have been something quite special. Instead it's a poor film that even die-hard Daredevil fans will struggle with. Thankfully with a reboot happening soon, this franchise could still be saved.

3/10