Daredevil

Year of release : 2003

Run time : 2h13m

Genre : Action / Fantasy

Cast : Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Colin Farrell, Jon Favreau, Michael Clarke Duncan, Joe Pantoliano, Coolio, Ellen Pompeo

The superhero movie, written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson, is based on the Marvel comics created by Stan Lee and Bill Everett.

Matt Murdock’s father was a boxer when he was a child. Matt is bullied by his peers as they say his father is a washed up boxer who now works for a kingpin. Matt doesn’t believe it, but when he goes to his work, he finds out he hasn’t been working there for a few months, and he finds him in an alley roughing up a man. Matt runs away disappointed, and almost runs into a truck which was carrying biohazard materials. The truck driver pushes the breaks, and ends up driving into the biohazard barrels, splashing into Matt’s eyes.

Matt wakes up in the hospital with only his eyes bandaged and wounded. He realizes he can’t see anymore, but can hear everything from miles away, he can hear what his father talks to the doctors in other rooms, and the IV drop sounds like a loud thump in his ears.

His father vows to become an honest person, and refuses to lose a fight for the same king pin, who has him k1lled, leaving a single rose as a signature of who’s done it.

 

20 years later, Matt sleeps in a salt water tank, like Dracula in the coffin (good thing he can sleep only on his back for 6-7 hours, and didn’t drown by turning on a side! He also sleeps with his mouth open! I couldn’t help it and had to google, and apparently people can’t spend that much time in water as they get serious health problems starting from fragmented sleep, severe skin damage and hypothermia, next to the one I just mentioned of drowning. Not to mention his tank would cut his oxygen intake! )

Anyway, Matt is now a pro-bono lawyer who helps people he knows (through their heartbeats) are innocent. This keeps them poor, as his partner always complains, but somehow Matt lives the life in a Batcave-like house.

Matt is defending a woman who was r@ped by an employee of the king pin, and the man gets away with it, so he puts on his Daredevil costume and goes after him at night.

A reporter keeps on writing articles about Daredevil, which everybody says doesn’t exist. His partner believes he does, he also believes in the alligators in the sewers. Matt mocks him all the time about it.

One day, while at a diner with is partner, he smells Elektra’s scent, and goes to talk to her. She is not into it, as she hears his partner choking (he put mustard in Matt’s coffee and Matt replaced the cups), thinking he laughs at them. She leaves, and Matt follows her like a creep. They end up fighting, for he won’t quit (it felt they were looking for a reason to fight like in the martial art movies). The fighting scene although looked good, was ridiculous in the real-life context.

She wins, and tells him her name is Elektra. Her bodyguards come to take her, so she leaves.

Elektra is the daughter of a Greek billionaire.

The new kingpin k1lls his men thinking they talked. Elektra’s father is the kingpin’s partner, and tells him he wants out, and asks him to buy his share out, as he is too old to end up in prison.

The kingpin wants to stage Elektra’s father as the real kingpin, and orders Bullseye to k1ll the both of them.

Matt gets a new case, of a man accused to have k1lled a woman. Matt takes his partner to the murdered woman’s place, and realizes she was k1lled in her apartment then put on the street, to make it look like she was k1lled outside. Matt finds something written on the furniture.

Elektra finds Matt, and they go on a date. Matt hears someone being robbed and cuts the date short. Priorities.

Because he is dating Elektra, she sends him an invitation to the “Black and White Ball”. Matt doesn’t want to go, but his partner insists, as he wants clients who can pay them money not in fish or sport supplies.

They do go to the ball, and they meet the kingpin, who signals to Elektra’s father his time is out. Her father leaves the ball and Elektra follows him. Bullseye goes after their car, while Daredevil is trying to stop him. Not only that he can’t, but Bullseye throws Daredevil’s stick at her father when he gets out of the car, k1lling him in front of her, making her believe Daredevil k1lled him.

Now Elektra wants vengeance, and trains to go after Daredevil.

I personally enjoyed the movie. 2003 was a good year for movies, the best year in my opinion (We had The Lord of the Rings sequel, The Matrix sequels, the Terminator one, the X-Men one, the Charlie’s Angels one, the first Pirates of the Caribbean, Bad Boys 2, Kill Bill vol 1, Gothika..). Colin Farrell as Bullseye was funny to me. I also liked Matt’s partner, who was supposed to be “unintentionally” funny.

I remember at the time ,after the innovative visual effects of The Matrix every fighting / action movie tried to recreate them and had them in it, just that, they forget, it worked in The Matrix because the action takes place in the mind, it’s not real!

We get to see Daredevil jumping through buildings like he’s Spider-Man, and Elektra jumping from the ground to a building and then to a higher building without any help from any device, just flying like she’s Wonder Woman or something! And these are people without special powers or abilities to fly and such!

Speaking of which, Daredevil gets the biohazard liquid spilled only in his eyes! He loses his sight but he gets a fantastic hearing somehow and other abilities, like he can jump and fly off the buildings like an acrobat, fight bullies like Neo in the Matrix, which makes no sense, ’cause he’s blind, first of all ! In the scene where he goes after the r@pist, he climbs the ceiling, and stands on the chandelier (how can it support his weight ?!)!!!

I didn’t like the long ending SPOILERS as he lets the king pin live, although he saw his face! END OF SPOILERS

I didn’t like the outfits, their costumes, especially Elektra’s.

The acting was good.

The soundtrack by Graeme Revell, was rock, at times sounded good, but at times I thought didn’t match.

The visual effects were good. They reminded me of the ones in The Matrix, when Neo lost his sight.

Daredevil received reviews under 43% from the critics of Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, and under 5.5 from the audiences of the same platforms.

Cinema Score audiences graded it a B, while IMDB graded it a 5.3.

You can watch it for free on the Ok.Ru platform.

Rating : Worth a watch !