Redux Month - Daredevil

“How do you kill a man without fear?”

What kind of dumb question is that? Being unafraid doesn’t make you bulletproof, immune to knives or poison or fire, it doesn’t make you able to breathe underwater, or be incapable of succumbing to injuries. You kill him the same way you kill anyone else.

Next up for redux month, we’re talking about Daredevil and I’ve got a confession to make, when I did my original Daredevil review, I’d never read a Daredevil comic, and it would be another 6 months before the Netflix show would come out and redefine Daredevil in my eyes (along with a lot of people’s). The purpose of the review was to defend the casting of Ben Affleck as Batman in the then upcoming Batman v Superman movie… which as you all worked out so well, our latest Batman is Edward Cullen from Twilight. I kid, Robert Pattinson’s a decent actor.

So what’s my new take on Daredevil. Oh boy is it bad, but it’s still not as bad as Elektra. I know, I’m full of hot takes here.

Daredevil is the story of Matt Murdock. Blind Catholic Lawyer by day, vigilante by night. But when a woman enters his life (yes, seriously) everything changes, or doesn’t because here’s a major problem, Elektra may as well not have been in this movie. Her ‘death’ doesn’t alter the narrative, her resurrection comes in her sh*tty spinoff, and they smooth her character over to the point where she’s barely recognisable, I’ll give Elektra the film this, they didn’t do that, yay for them, I guess.

It doesn’t really do much with Matt’s alter-ego, Foggy is used for comic relief and is otherwise criminally underused. Karen Page is there, I think, not that you’d notice. Ben Urich (who I initially called Erik in my previous review, oops) is that annoying reporter that won’t shut up about stories, thankfully he’s barely in it. There is no legal angle to this story, nothing for Matt Murdock to do, other than fall in love and *grumbles* I get this way with female superheroes too, so pipe down you at the back, also Matt confesses his sins to a Father at the church, I thought the whole idea of confessional is the Father doesn’t know who you are.

When it comes to Daredevil it’s still pretty lacklustre. Bullseye is a cartoon villain, I mean he’s a very effective one, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t kill a guy with a paper clip, then suddenly have a f*ckton more of them appear out of nowhere and throw those, but he’s a bit too much, coming off like a petulant child because Daredevil committed the unspeakable crime of ducking.

The whole idea of rain allowing Matt to see again is something that perhaps sounds good on paper but doesn’t make any goddamn sense under any scrutiny, the amount of information you would have to process to get a clear picture when some raindrops land is… it’s just ludicrous.

Michael Clark Duncan as the Kingpin is better but in spite of his impressive feats of strength, he’s defeated rather easily. You get the impression there’s some deleted scenes that explain the word getting out about the Kingpin, because the most we get in the film is Urich theorising. Anyone want to explain what point Wesley had in this?

The whole final act seems rather rushed, as Daredevil reaches his lowest moment, gravely injured but we basically go from action scene to action scene with no time for breathing. Daredevil deciding not to kill the Kingpin doesn’t really feel earned, being a response to a kid seeing a guy in a devil costume beating a mugger and being scared is stupid as his costume is supposed to be intentionally scary.

The conclusion too leaves out several subplots, the idea that the police think Daredevil killed Frank Natchios is never mentioned again and 2 points about this. One, it was done in a wide-open street, how did no-one, not even Elektra, see what happened? And two, how did a baton penetrate someone’s chest, there’s no sharp edge to it and Bullseye doesn’t have super-strength where I might buy this.

All the writer references this film had, I found it kind of odd they called the rapist Quesada, after the Editor in Chief of Marvel Comics. I know it’s supposed to be just a cute refuse but I can’t see any of them getting an invite to a Quesada run party after that.

The editing is obnoxious with quick cuts in the action scenes making things difficult to follow and transition shots that give me a headache.

Daredevil is not very good. I stand by saying it’s not Ben Affleck’s fault but a lousy script, a fundamental misunderstanding of Daredevil, focusing on a storyline involving Elektra that takes up 1/3 of the movie and goes nowhere, poor pacing and editing and underwhelming villains.

Rating 35/100