Sigh...wrong. Even back then I thought this movie was awful - the plot had countless holes in it and it just felt rushed and half-finished. But, having seen the excellent "Daredevil" Netflix series that Marvel did recently (after "The Defenders", my favourite of the five Marvel "Hell's Kitchen" efforts), I did wonder - had I been too harsh on it? Had time maybe allowed it to shine through a bit more.
In a word - no. If anything, this film is actually even worse than I remember it being back in 2003. Watching the Netflix series recently probably didn't help matters as seeing how well that was done really magnifies what an ugly, badly written and flawed film this is even further.
We're introduced to Matt Murdock and and his co-lawyer in the firm Foggy Nelson (Affleck and Favreau) early on as they're shown in court having failed to convict a man who's been attacking women on the underground. Later, as the villain celebrates in a den of iniquity, Murdock's crimefighting alter ego Daredevil crashes the party, beats seven bells out of everyone then chases the ne'er-do-well down a tube station and knocks him under a train.
Okay, even just a few minutes into this film I'm angry - one of the main parts of Daredevil's character is that he never kills anyone (indeed, in the TV series, it's one of the main contentions between him, Stick and Elektra) so seeing him do this so early in the film just kills a lot of the sympathy I would normally have for the character. Afterwards, we see reporter Ben Urich talking with the police and it's revealed that Daredevil has left his signature in petrol on the platform which ignites when Urich drops his lighter on it. Again, another stupid idea - the whole thing with Daredevil is he's a secretive guy who tries to keep his two identities separate by not bringing attention to himself, having him do something as dumbass as this (is he meant to be f**king Zorro or something? Gnnnnn..) just makes him feel like a cookie-cutter action dude by numbers rather than the man of mystery that he's supposed to be.
Oh yeah, we also find out that Daredevil sleeps in a metal coffin in a church crypt. Why this is, I do not know. We also get a bit of his backstory which is pretty much the same as both the TV series and the 1989 film we reviewed a while back on here - he lost his sight after being sprayed by a toxic barrel that fell off a lorry and his dad was a boxer who was offed by the Kingpin's minions after refusing to throw a fight for them.
Murdock and Nelson are eating breakfast in a cafe when Matt gets talking to a girl at the counter - she tells him to get lost and leaves so he follows her using her scent. Way way creepier than it needs to be, especially in this post-Weinstein era. The two of them have a confrontation and exchange some martial arts playfight moves in a park after which the girl, Elektra Natchios (Garner), decides she actually loves him after he's been stalking her and hassling her for the previous ten minutes. Yeesh...like I said, just creepy and wrong.
Matt returns to his office after lunch to have Karen Page tell him that he and Nelson have been invited to a black tie ball at the Natchios family residence. That's Karen's one line in the film pretty much by the way. Prior to the ball, Elektra's father Nikolas is shown meeting with his business partner Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, and says he wants out of Fisk's criminal activities. Fisk grants him his release but then tells Wesley, his right hand man, to send for his prize assassin to carry out a hit on Nikolas.
That assassin turns out to be Bullseye (Farrell), an Irish hitman with a target-shaped scar in the middle of his forehead. Farrell is over-acting to a ridiculous degree here, so much so that it's near impossible to take his character seriously. On the plane to New York, we see him trapped next to a woman who won't shut up so he uses his knife-throwing skills to flick a sleeping pill into her mouth. Um, yeah...
Matt and Elektra meet up at the party but as Nikolas leaves, Bullseye is shown going after him. Daredevil gives chase and manages to corner him but Nikolas is killed in the skirmish with Bullseye using a dart identical to the ones Daredevil uses. Thinking that Daredevil was responsible, Elektra swears revenge.
After working out he's been framed by getting help from an insider in the forensics lab (Kevin Smith!), Matt tracks Bullseye down to a rooftop but he is ambushed by Elektra who it turns out is a martial arts expert herself. The two fight with Ellie stabbing Matt with her katana and wounding him. She unmasks him and realises what's happened. Matt tells her the truth and she goes after Bullseye alone but he makes quick work of her, stabbing her with her own katana on the rooftop. Daredevil gets there but he's too late.
Wounded, Daredevil heads to the church to be tended to by Father Everett (the priest who he confesses his sins to) but Bullseye is hot on his trail and sets off the pipes in the church organ by hitting them with a hammer, disorientating Murdock. However, he hears a police sniper over the confusion and pulls Bullseye in the way so the bullet goes through his hand. He then pushes him off the church spire with the assassin landing on a car and being arrested.
We then see Daredevil arriving at Fisk's HQ and the two of them having a showdown. No mention of how he got there so quickly or why there weren't any guards watching the place, it just cuts straight to that bit. Talk about bad editing. The two have a fight with Daredevil initially being overpowered but eventually hitting the sprinkler system. As he can place people's positions by hearing where the water falls, it allows him to get the upper hand and break Fisk's legs before leaving him for the police to collect. Fisk threatens to blow his cover but Daredevil asks him if he can really live with the other prisoners know he was beaten in a fight by a blind man. At the end of the film, Murdock meets Ben Urich, who has guessed his identity but agrees to keep it secret as he believes Daredevil is a good protector of New York.
Oh lordy, that film was painful to watch. A combination of a terrible script, bad acting (Affleck is wooden beyond belief, Farrell is over-acting to a ridiculous level and Garner just looks lost for the majority of it), inexplicable editing meaning we spend about twice as long going through Daredevil's origins as we do on the big final fight scene with Kingpin (there's supposed to be a directors' cut out there in which the plot actually has some sort of cohesion but I have no desire to put myself through this again) and some pretty glaring differences between the comics really make this a stinker. It's a close-run thing but I'm afraid that this has officially gone to the bottom of the pile - just an absolute disaster on every level.
Despite negative reviews, Daredevil actually did reasonably well at the cinema and a follow-up was actually mooted for a while (we did get a spin-off in 2006's Elektra which was actually a bit better and which we'll review on here in a few weeks) but it never got off the ground and by 2014, the series had been brought back in house by Marvel and moved on to Netflix for the far superior TV series. So there was a happy ending to this...eventually. Suffice to say though - avoid this like the plague.
FINAL RATING: 👿👿 (2/10)
CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE
1. Spiderman (2002) (9/10)
2. Men In Black (1997) (8/10)
3. X-Men (2000) (8/10)
4. Blade 2 (2001) (7/10)
5. Blade (1998) (7/10)
6. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
7. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
8. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
9. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
10. Men In Black 2 (2000) (6/10)
11. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
12. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
13. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
14. Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD (1998) (4/10)
15. The Fantastic Four (1994) (4/10)
16. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
17. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
18. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
19. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
20. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
21. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
22. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
23. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
24. Generation X (1996) (2/10)
25. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)
26. Daredevil (2003) (2/10)
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