Daredevil on DVD

At last, Marvel’s most famous B-grade superhero has made it to the big screen.

After the success of Blade and X-Men, Marvel Comics signed deals with pretty much every studio to bring pretty much every super hero to theaters. Daredevil isn’t as good as Blade, X-Men, Spider-Man, or The Hulk, but it’s enjoyable enough.

As a kid, Matt Murdock (Ben Affleck) was sprayed with some kind of radioactive fluid, causing blindness, but giving him a superhuman radar sense. After the death of his father, Matt vowed to become a nighttime avenger, looking after the people who couldn’t look after themselves.

He manages to make his way through law school and all that, becomes a responsible adult, and falls for a beautiful girl, Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner). But his simple life gets more complex when the Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan) hires Bullseye (Colin Farrell) to kill his girlfriend.

The man without fear suddenly has something to fear, and must use every bit of his courage and ability to overcome the super villains.

The movie takes most of its story from the Frank Miller era of the comic book. Daredevil is a hero, but a conflicted one. His story is dark, the character flawed, and the bad guys smarter than usual. The Kingpin is a mean mutha, caring only about the profitability in anything he does. Bullseye is a heartless assassin who can hit anything from any distance with any device. Together, they’re quite the evil duo.

Director Mark Steven Johnson, a longtime Daredevil fan, has crafted a movie that fits well into the current Marvel craze. It’s visually compelling, with believable performances (for the most part) and a story that Daredevil fans will enjoy (and non-fans will tolerate).

Ben Affleck – at first – may not seem like a very good choice to play the man without fear, but he actually does a good job. He’s a hero with special powers, but he’s also very much human, which would be a hard role to play, but Affleck does it very well. Colin Farrell (who was apparently the original choice to play the hero) brings the only truly memorable performance to the film. Some may object to him not resembling the comic book villain at all, but rising stars need to be recognized, and at least he’s believable as a psychotic killer. Jennifer Garner is a good enough actress, but it’s hard to picture her as Elektra. And even though the comic Kingpin is an exceptionally large white man, Michael Clarke Duncan is probably the only person in Hollywood that could appropriately portray him. He’s big, strong, and thoroughly intimidating.

We’re willing enough to suspend our disbelief when Daredevil leaps off of ten-story buildings and lands on the ground without hurting himself, but the fact that rain falling can help him to see again is a little farfetched. In fact, that’s not the only aspect of the movie that doesn’t quite add up, but hey…it’s a comic book movie.

It’s not the best comic book movie to date, but when you take into account the early nineties version of the Punisher and previous attempts at Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk, it’s still a very pleasant surprise. It has its flaws, but try not to read too much into it and you should enjoy it.

As we can almost always expect, 20th Century Fox has provided an excellent DVD. So good, in fact, that it is quite possibly one of the best of the year. The anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1, 16x9 TV compatible) picture is a dark, but nearly perfect transfer. There are plenty of night scenes, and almost as many shots of Daredevil’s “radar sense,” but the picture is so clean that we can always see exactly what’s going on. There is not a single trace of grain, and individual dark sections are distinguishable from other darks.

In the audio section, we get 5.1 versions of Dolby Digital and dts. There is plenty of surround use, with bullets and stuff flying all around, and various other sound effects creating an engulfing effect. Dialogue is restricted to the front, while music and sound effects use all five channels effectively. The dts track seems a bit quieter than the DD, but overall quality is a tiny bit clearer.

Disc one features an audio commentary with Mark Steven Johnson and producer Gary Foster. There is plenty of information here, and the two really enjoy the subject matter (Johnson has been a Daredevil fan for years and has dreamed of bringing him to the big screen for nearly as long). Overall, however, the track is pretty dry. Neither are particularly engaging speakers, but at least they have a lot to say.

Also on disc one is a trivia track featuring plenty of points on the history of the character and the production.

Disc two has a whole whack of extras, the best being two, hour-long documentaries. The first is “The Art of Daredevil,” and is all about the history of the comic book, and features interviews with Stan Lee, Frank Miller, Kevin Smith, and several others involved in Daredevil over the years. We learn more than we ever thought we could about everyone’s favorite blind super hero. The other doc is “Beyond Hell’s Kitchen” and is all about the production. It’s similar to the documentary on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace: it’s all natural, with no irritating narration. It takes us through the production, filming, and postproduction, covering pretty much everything. Both docs are very interesting, but the former is probably only for those who like, or are at least familiar with, the comic.

Continuing disc two, we have six short production featurettes: “L.A. for N.Y.,” “Combat Choreography,” “Costume Design,” “Smoke and Fire,” “Film Work,” and “Seeing With Sound.” What is interesting about them is that they work as an extended branching version of the making-of documentary. Why they weren’t just included into the doc is beyond us. It’s probably so they can advertise 6 additional featurettes on the packaging.

But we're not cynical...

Moving on, we get the rarely entertaining HBO First Look special that is all fluff, a multi-angle scene study, a Jennifer Garner screen test (why just her, you ask? Why not other principal actors? We have no idea), a comic-to-film comparison, Kingpin featurette, three music videos, still galleries, character bios, and trailers.

Daredevil, from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
103 minutes, anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) 16X9 enhanced, 5.1 Dolby Digital & DTS
Starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Michael Clarke Duncan and Colin Farrell
Produced by Arnon Milchan, Gary Foster, Avi Arad
Written for the screen and directed by Mark Steven Johnson

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