Daredevil
“Daredevil” suffers mostly from failure to commit. If you’re going to make a superhero movie, you need to decide whether you’re making “Batman” or “Unbreakable.” If you want to be campy and wild and unrealistic, run with it. If you want to show a hero who hurts and doubts and lives in the same world we all live in, so be it. But you can’t have it both ways.
“Daredevil” also suffers from poor casting. Ben Affleck is one of the most impassive stars working today, so it’s probably best not to cast him as a blind man whose face is mostly covered in a mask. And Jennifer Garner is sweet and charming and charismatic in her own way, but she just can’t pull off the vengeful assassin her character becomes (if any actress could, given that the transformation takes all of five minutes of screen time).
For all its problems, I can’t say I was bored watching this movie. Colin Farrell, for his part, definitely commits to the craziness of Bullseye. (I agree with John and Matt that Farrell would have been quite good in Affleck’s role.) Jon Favreau gets off some great lines as the requisite sidekick. And there are quite a few nice touches, including some cool “radar sense” footage to show you what Matt Murdock’s world looks like. But it’s just not enough to hang a movie on, much less a franchise.
found your diary through a link from a link of a diaryland diary. 0=) I have to definately agree that they needed to decide if they were going to do a “batman” or “unbreakable”… there was absolutely no flow and the whole thing seemed just really poorly structured. But that’s just me!
I’ve seen both Batman and Unbreakable, and liked them both enough to buy the DVDs. Daredevil, however, I won’t buy, unless it’s just for Colin Farrell.
Why? I was bored. Not severely bored, but bored in the “not really caring” way. There was nothing I hated, nothing that really annoyed me (well, I got tired of slo-mo camera affects after a while). I was bored with the cliches, bored with the bored actors (Excelt Farrell, who was definately NOT bored. I will never look at a paperclip the same way, OR a honey roasted peanut). It was just interesting enough that I didn’t walk out, but, even though I’ve never read the comic, it held no surprises. Zero surprises. No one said anything, no one did anything, no one even looked anything that wasn’t predictable,
I gave it a big “eh”.
Adam, did you see the news story about the woman sueing the movie exibitor for wasting her life with pre-movie product advertisments?