...as much as I enjoyed the Director's Cut of Daredevil, I still wish Colin Farrell had played the hero and Ben Affleck had been in some other movie.
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The Movie According to John:
This new Director's Cut of "Daredevil" is a first for me. It's the first time I've ever watched a film I thought was thoroughly mediocre upon initial viewing that I quite enjoyed the next time around in a expanded, augmented version. Why in the world didn't they do this in the first place!
Well, according to writer/director Mark Steven Johnson and producer Avi Arad (who is also the CEO of Marvel Enterprises), this 133-minute Director's Cut is the version of the film they originally conceived before the studio pressured them to cut it down to a leaner, faster-paced 103-minute version. Believe me, the additional thirty minutes make all the difference in the world between a commonplace superhero movie and a recommendable one.
Ironically, in opening up the movie, adding more violence, including a subplot, and extending quite a few scenes, the filmmakers don't lessen the tempo but increase it. The 133 minutes of the Director's Cut go by a lot quicker than the 103 minutes of the theatrical version because of the viewer's expanded involvement in the story and characters. Of course, we still have Ben Affleck in the lead, and I still don't think he's perfect superhero material, but he is much more believable in the role this time around as we get to know his character a little better and understand his motivations.
Let me go through some of the comments and criticisms I made of the theatrical release and compare them to my reactions to the Director's Cut. This may be more enlightening for me than it will be for you, but bear with it.
I said initially that I didn't think "Daredevil" was entirely bad; it was just ordinary, a discomforting could-have-been. This time it isn't "ordinary." It's got a genuine heart beating under all its CGI effects, matte paintings, costumes, and daring deeds.
Genre pictures follow formulas or they wouldn't be genre pictures, and superhero epics are no exceptions. The audience must be informed how the superhero came into being, how he (or she) acquired his costume, who his enemies are, how powerful they are, who his love interest is, etc. Sometimes a Tim Burton comes up with an interesting variation, like the dark atmosphere he created for the "Batman" series, or an M. Night Shyamalan does something really bizarre like chronicling exclusively the protagonist's emergence as a superhero in "Unbreakable." Even Sam Raimi, not always known for his subtlety, insured that "Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man 2" provided sympathy and understanding for the hero. These were things sorely missing in the theatrical release of "Daredevil," which followed the formula with a cold vengeance and little more. For the Director's Cut, however, a new subplot involves Daredevil (in reality, lawyer Matt Murdock) defending a derelict drug addict (Coolio), showing us he really is a champion of the underdog while coincidentally making more sense of the plot. And there is a touch more violence added to the fight scenes, making them more exciting as well as more spectacular (and also earning the heretofore PG-13 rated film an R for "violence and language," the "language" being a single profanity).
The first "Daredevil" should not have been a disappointment, but when it was shortened, too much was taken out, eviscerating it entirely. Now, the film's great (if Burton-derived) look remains, as do a formidable pair of villains, a stouthearted superheroine, and its intriguing hero. The film's tone remains dark and its script gloomy, but this time it works because there is a modicum more humor thrown in. Even Affleck's determinedly vapid performance in the theatrical version seems more inspired this time around.
To remind you, the story is based on the Marvel comics cult character conceived by Frank Miller and written for the screen and directed by Mark Steven Johnson ("Simon Birch"). Daredevil is portrayed as a modern tragic hero, a great man afflicted by a tragic flaw. Unfortunately, one of the theatrical release's shortcomings was that it never made clear just what that tragic flaw was. The script simply alluded to Daredevil's troubled past, tormented soul, and tortured mind, presumably the results of the sheer quantity of death and destruction he saw around him in his native Hell's Kitchen area of New York City, corruption he was unable completely to stop. This time out, we see more reasons for Daredevil's distress and more reasons why he feels he must continue fighting on, against all odds.
I continue to like the movie's appearance, a dim, murky atmosphere of nighttime cityscapes that begins with the film's opening shots as the camera pans around New York, up buildings and around corners. Daredevil is perched on a church spire, high above it all, and moments later lies on the church floor narrating in flashback the events of his life as they flicker before his apparently dying eyes.
Within this framework, we're told the superhero's gimmick: He's blind. This is revealed in perhaps the longest prologue to a story line in any superhero movie short of "Unbreakable." Daredevil tells us that his name is Matt Murdock and that he grew up tough in Hell's Kitchen. He also tells us that at a very early age he was accidentally blinded by a chemical spray and as a result his other four senses began functioning with superhuman sharpness, his sense of hearing becoming a sort of radar that enabled him to "see" with his ears.
Now, I'm not against a comic-book story reaching pretty far into the fantasy realm; that's what they're all about. But the story should at least make some attempt at creating a consistent and believable fantasy world, and for me the theatrical release of "Daredevil" did not do it. The movie simply told us that young Matt acquired superhuman powers, no questions asked. Were they a gift from God? Or a fluke of nature? The possibility of a Divine endowment was hinted at by Daredevil's daily return to a church cathedral, ostensibly for renewal, soaking in a crypt to revitalize his powers. But such vague innuendos were never developed or followed up on as they are in the Director's Cut. Where before we left frustrated, now we given a few more clues to put together a plausible background for the hero.
Still, we have in the Director's Cut what appears to be only a short period of a few months before young Matt has learned karate, judo, kung fu, and acrobatics well enough to best any hoods on the planet, and he is doing back flips and jumps from building to building that would make a "Matrix," a "Crouching Tiger," or a "Spider-Man" proud! So that hasn't changed, and it requires a mighty leap of faith to accept it all.
When his dad, a boxer named Jack "The Devil" Murdock (David Keith), was murdered by hoodlums, young Matt donned his father's red cape and swore he would seek justice "one way or another." As an adult he became a caped crusader (albeit without the cape) and a prosecuting attorney. If he lost in court, he got even by night.
Daredevil's one physical weakness is that he can't stand loud, shrill noises, which throw his radar off; it's like Superman's Kryptonite. Moreover, he's not a happy man. He's in pain all the time from so much crime fighting; he can't maintain a relationship with a girl; he works all day at the office and then all night on the rooftops. That all remains in the Director's Cut, but somehow it seems more credible with just the little added detail that pops up here and there.
One advantage to a supersensitive nose, however, is that he can sniff out a pretty woman at fifty yards in another room. And thus begins the film's main plot. Murdock meets his love interest in the story, Elecktra Natchios (Jennifer Garner), a lady almost as skilled in martial arts as he is and a woman whom he has literally to fight to find out her name. Talk about playing hard to get. Her character still appears too late in the story and disappears too soon, but at least she gets more screen time during her biggest fight scene later in the picture. Seems she's the daughter of a billionaire (Erick Avari), who's connected to a big-time hoodlum partner, Wilson Fisk (big Michael Clarke Duncan). For obscure reasons (something about breaking up the partnership), Fisk wants both the father and Electra killed and sends his number-one henchman, Bullseye (Colin Farrell), to do the job. Bullseye steals the show; he is very good at throwing things, using everything from darts to pencils to paper clips to murder his victims, and he never misses. Almost. Until he meets Daredevil. Which pisses him off so much he goes after the superhero on his own.
"Daredevil" continues to be a film of contradictions, a movie with a number of ambitions that didn't always work in the first release. Colin Farrell's villain, for instance, is no ordinary comic heavy like Lex Luther or the Joker. He's mean and vicious, a sadistic butcher who will kill a man over a darts game or a flippant remark. As played by Farrell, he was the most interesting character in the theatrical release, but like many of the film's other goings on he was so at odds with the lightweight nature of the rest of the comic-book fantasy, it was hard to accept him. This time, we become more involved with Daredevil as a real person, and because we're more connected with Daredevil and his motives, the Bullseye character doesn't seem so menacingly weird that he's out of place.
Joe Pantoliano shows up as a newspaper reporter, Ben Urich, hot on Daredevil's trail and keen to unmask the anonymous crime-fighter, but in the theatrical release his role lead only to an expected, inevitable conclusion. I'm happy to say that like Daredevil himself, Pantoliano's character is also fleshed out a bit more this time, making him more crucial to the story line, as is Jon Favreau's character, Murdock's law partner, Frank Nelson, who is so completely witless he doesn't realize his friend is Daredevil. Then there's the mysterious "Kingpin," the city's prime mover in the world of wrongdoing and the man Daredevil thinks is responsible for his father's death. In the earlier film, he was such an obvious mark, he was not mysterious for long, and he was dispatched later on with relative ease. In the Director's Cut, the Kingpin is more brutal and more deadly, a worthier opponent for Daredevil's physical and mental abilities.
As I've said, the film has always had an especially effective, atmospheric look and feel to it, and it doesn't matter that it's derived from Burton's "Batman." The film also has a couple of exceptionally exciting fight scenes in it (choreographed by Cheung-Yan Yeung), and it doesn't matter that they're derived from "The Matrix." In the Director's Cut the fights are more exciting than ever, especially in the last thirty minutes or so. Additionally, the film has a number of convincing digital effects in it that are hardly noticeable as special effects at all. Combine these qualities with a strong supporting cast, and you get a pretty decent action film this time out.
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[release]12984[/release]