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Released in 2003, in what was probably an attempt to cash in on the success of Marvel's recent Big-Screen adaptations X-Men and Spiderman, Daredevil was met with decent success the world over, but didn't quite strike the same chord with viewers or reviewers as those two movies did, was ... Read review
When justice is blind it knows no fear. 30 minutes of never before seen footage ... more
seamlessly edited back into the film creating a whole new sub-plot featuring a brand new character! Ben Affleck is Matt Murdock a.k.a Daredevil. As a young boy he lost...
Postage & Packaging: £0.00 Availability: 3-5 working days
More Action...More Excitement...More Daring Than Ever!Grittier and edgier than the ... more
original theatrical release, this extended-length Director's Cut version of Daredevil contains over 30 minutes of never-before-available scenes, including a devilish sub...
Production Year: 1964 - Action/Adventure - Director: Cyril Endfield - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring:Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, James Booth, Michael Caine, Nigel Green
Production Year: 1996 - Action/Adventure - Director: Tom Clegg - Original Language: English - Classification: 12 years and over - Starring:Daragh O'Malley, Oliver Cotton, Jason Durr, Sean Bean, Allie Byrne
Production Year: 2002 - Action/Adventure - Director: Vincenzo Natali - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Lucy Liu, David Hewlett, Anne Marie Scheffler, Joseph Scoren, Matthew Sharp, Jeremy Northam
Advantages: Some decent performances Disadvantages: characters,plot,soundtrack,fights,BORING
...Big-Screen adaptations X-Men and Spiderman, Daredevil was met with decent success the world over, but didn't quite strike the same chord with viewers or reviewers as those two movies did, was that purely down to the lack of familiarity with the character?
Daredevil follows Matt Murdock(Ben Affleck - Mallrats), Matt was blinded as a child by toxic waste, and his boxer father was killed for refusing to take a dive. However, ... ...of the entire Natchios family. Daredevil tries to stop him, but Elektra ends up believing that Daredevil killed her father, and goes into training to kill him.
Things heat up on the rooftops of Hell's Kitchen as Daredevil tries to bring down Bullseye and the Kingpin, Bullseye tries to finish his job and Elektra tries to kill the man she believes killed her father, unknown to her he is the man she loves...
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Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Released in 2003, in what was probably an attempt to cash in on the success of Marvel's recent Big-Screen adaptations X-Men and Spiderman, Daredevil was met with decent success the world over, but didn't quite strike the same chord with viewers or reviewers as those two movies did, was that purely down to the lack of familiarity with the character?
Daredevil follows Matt Murdock(Ben Affleck - Mallrats), Matt was blinded as a child by toxic waste, and his boxer father was killed for refusing to take a dive. However, Matt's other senses were supercharged when he was blinded, and he has devoted his life to fighting crime in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York city, both by night as the vigilante Daredevil, and by day as a lawyer.
The movie follows him as he falls in love with Elektra Natchios(Jennifer Garner - Elektra), the daughter of corrupt businessman Nikolas(Erick Avari - Stargate), who is in league with Wilson Fisk(Michael Clarke Duncan - The Green Mile), known to all as 'The Kingpin' of New York crime. When Natchios tells the Kingpin he wants out of their business ventures, he calls in an Irish assassin named Bullseye(Colin Farrell - Alexander) to take care of the entire Natchios family. Daredevil tries to stop him, but Elektra ends up believing that Daredevil killed her father, and goes into training to kill him.
Things heat up on the rooftops of Hell's Kitchen as Daredevil tries to bring down Bullseye and the Kingpin, Bullseye tries to finish his job and Elektra tries to kill the man she believes killed her father, unknown to her he is the man she loves...
So the story writeup is pretty short, but it essentially covers the entire movie. The plot is very,very standard, especially for a super hero movie, with the plot not offerring anything even remotely noteworthy. Everything here has been done before in more inventive, and generally more interesting ways, from the love/hate relationship of the two costumed ones (see:Batman Returns, and this was also planned for Spiderman 2) to the whole self-questioning angle done in every superhero movie ever, you have seen everything here before, but done with that little bit more class,skill and general likeability.
The plot's main fault is that it's just boring, something no comic movie ever should be. They've tried to take the Batman route and make things dark and gothic, not things I associated with Daredevil, and it just seems rather silly and forced to try and ensure Spiderman didn't totally show it up. It's also littered with holes, such as how a reporter came to the conclusion, without ever seeing either one, that Matt Murdock was Daredevil.
Along with their X-Men movies, this carries on Fox's obsession with outfitting super heroes in leather fetish gear. While I suppose it's better than lycra in terms of practical wear, I half wish they had got the Spiderman rights, to see if they made him up like a gimp. Speaking of the leather suit, the design just sucks. Daredevil had a pretty plain costume to begin with (actually he has had 3,a mostly yellow one with a red torso,a sleeker black and red number and the all red outfit used here) and to try and make it more interesting, they have added lots of straps and buckles and stuff that just makes it look more like fetish gear. the mask is also poor, instead of a cowl covering the neck like in Batman, DD's just covers the top of his head.
I would have thought the black and red outfit would have been easier, and cooler to realise on the big screen, but I guess not, although one plot fault brought up in another review about the costume begs to be mentioned:
Matt's hearing is supersonic right?(in one of the movie's coolest little things, he sleeps with his ears submerged in water to drown out the sounds of the city), but he wears a leather suit. Leather, the loudest material when moving on the planet, he must be in agony every time he moves a muscle.
Actually I would be lying if I said the plot was total garbage, it occasionally throws in some little gems of decency that get your hopes up. Along with the aforementioned alternate take on a waterbed, Matt also has to pop painkillers after a night's work, which reveals a true human side. The scenes of him explaining to Elektra how he can gain a semblance of sight when water hits a surface, and he asks her to stand in the rain, is also a wonderful little scene, but then the fine folks behind the film completely undo all their good work by having ludicrous scenes of Daredevil writing the 'DD' logo in lighter fluid on the floor, waiting for someone to throw a cigarette on it to ignite it and reveal it's his work. This just disgusted me with it's stupidity, and it's never explained who coined the name 'Daredevil' to begin with, has he always called himself that?then how did the press get his name? couldn't he have picked something cooler?
Even in my comic reading days, I never picked up more than 2 issues of Daredevil, so I can't say how much characters have been altered, if at all, from their printed counterparts in most cases. I don't think Bullseye was Irish, and I know for a fact the Kingpin wasn't black, but far as I can say honestly, I don't know how much else has changed. I hear that Daredevil killing villains is totally out of character, but Im not picking up the comic just for the purpose of this review to find out, although one thing I do know is that DD is not Spiderman, and therefore should not be able to pull off some of the stuff he is doing in terms of gymnastics. Sure he is meant to be at the peak of physical condition, but really, be serious here.
Indeed, a lot has been made of the whole black Kingpin, and to be honest, Im not sure which side I fall into. I wasn't overly bothered, because I didn't even know Kingpin had anything to do with Daredevil, I always saw him as primarily a Spiderman foe, but I wasn't really impressed with the way the character was written anyway. While the Kingpin was pretty generic to begin with, this version of him tries to break the mold and just ends up a cliched mess of leaving roses on victims.
Funnily enough, the acting is actually of a pretty high standard, if not really right character wise. I'm by no means an Affleck fan, and I'm not sure I believe his claims he is a huge fan of the comic, but I really did feel for him here, he did seem to be trying, and put in a decent show, but I just couldn't buy him as Daredevil. He just didn't seem to suit the role at all, which, as I say, is a shame because he actually does seem to put a lot in it, and he is one of the reasons the aforemention rain scene works so well.
A similar case of performance good, but not really character is Clarke Duncan's Kingpin. While most people complained about his skin colour, and those on the defense cited the fact that he puts in a good performance as a villain, what they seem to neglect is that a good villain he plays, but he isn't the Kingpin, although the horrible writing job on the character saw to it that not even a real life version of the Kingpin could have played him well here.
Farrell takes what is a pretty worthless role in that of Bullseye and makes it memorable,amusing, and one of the movie's highlights, the film also sports a good supporting cast including Jon Favreau as Foggy Nelson, but Im not at all a fan of Jennifer Garner as Elektra. Garner is most famous for her TV show Alias, and how her pathetic and emotionless performance as Elektra earned a spin-off movie I'll never know. She also isn't all that attractive, sorry to break it to you.
The movie tried to pass itself of as an action movie with Martial Arts overtones, which roughly translates to lots of fights done with wire-fu. They even got in Tsuyoshi Abe, a B-Movie martial arts fight coreographer, to do the fights. The stunt crew includes names like Kane Hodder and Nils Allen Stewart, but at the end of the day, the action scenes are boring, unoriginal, and just a waste of time. No fight captured my interest in the least, and this is the epitome of why wire-fu should never have taken off, the fights do nothing spectacular, and yet aren't at all realistic, meaning you have a middle of the road, boring level of quality. The special effects...well they aren't that bad. The constant CGI looks very bad in some scenes, but good in others. The DD 'Sonar' effect is well realised though, and pretty cool at that.
The less said about the music, the better, I can assure you. Instead of taking the sensible route to a good super hero soundtrack (ie handing Danny Elfman your cash), Fox decided to take the other route and aim for the yoof culture, littering the film's soundtrack with such hateable acts as N.E.R.D,Evanescence,Hoobastank,Saliva and House of Pain. Did they really think playing the aural bile that is N.E.R.D's lapdance would build up some sort of 'street' atmosphere about the Kingpin? the bloody irritating gothic rock rubbish of Evanescence, who crop up twice (that's 5 times too much) would honestly capture the feel of a gothic city? well the fact is, it just makes this film look like an expensive advert for the soundtrack CD.
On the whole, while Im willing to accept it isn't a complete failure, I really do not see any reason why anyone would want to put money and time towards a movie like Daredevil. It's a failed attempt to cash in on Spiderman by copying Batman, and does nothing more than make you appreciate those two movies more. I hear the director's cut DVD is much better, but after witnessing the theatrical debacle, why would I want to take the chance?
Im willing to give the film a second star, mainly because it did seem that most of the cast were trying, and doing a decent job, but the characters and story they were working with was utter garbage, so they were really powerless to stop this being a turkey. Unless you are trying some sort of sadistic challenge to watch every comic book movie ever, or just the bad ones(actually that makes up about 90% of all of them anyway), then I wouldn't wish Daredevil upon you
Advantages: Made me like Ben Affleck, Good Plot and Action Sequences. Disadvantages: None that I can think of.
=== Daredevil ===
Director: Mark Steven Johnson
Release Date: 2003
Runtime: 133 mins Approx
Certificate: 15
=== Disk 1: Main Feature. ===
As the film starts, we see our hero, Daredevil aka, Matt Murdock (Ben Affleck), who is clutching onto a cross at the top of a church. He falls down into the church and is found by the priest. We then hear a voice over by Affleck, who says something about when you die your life flashes before you eyes, and ... ...have commited, Murdock dons his Daredevil costume, and sets out to bring them to justice using his own methods.
He meets a woman called Elektra one day, and instantly falls in love with her, although he can't tell her about his secret identity. Someone known only has the Kingpin, hires a hitman named Bullseye (Colin Farell), to kill Elektras father, because he no longer wants to be in the crime business.
He is killed by Daredevils weapon, after ...
Leigh36295 01.04.2008
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Daredevil (Director's Cut) (DVD)
Advantages: Good plot, excellent special effects Disadvantages: Maybe a bit rushed
Daredevil is a superhero who first appeared in comics way back in 1964. He is the billed as 'The Man without fear' and rightly so. His backstory is that as a boy he was blinded by toxic chemicals (everyday occurrence in comic book world) however the same chemicals also enhanced all of his other senses making him stronger, acrobatic, and with perfect balance. The sense most affected was his hearing which means that not only can he literally hear everything ... ...By day Daredevil (Ben Affleck as 'Matt Murdock') is a lawyer, however by night he dispenses the justice the courts cannot. He is also driven by the murder of his father when he was a child and an obsession with stopping 'The King Pin' who is said to control all of the crime in the city (Michael Clarke Duncan). The main story kicks off when Matt meets Elekra (Jennifer Garner). The attraction is mutual, however her father is involved in some shady ...
pdoyle007 10.04.2006
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Daredevil (Director's Cut) (DVD)
Advantages: Excellent Special Effects and stunts, Decent sound. Disadvantages: Average Acting sometimes poor, not very many special features
...films such as x-men (2) Daredevil was full of action and very involving. I recommend it although the action scenes are quite violet and thus not quite suitable for Children of young ages. Daredevil's story was good, though somewhat traditional in places. The story begins with a kid called mat who is being bullied because his father will no fight in a boxing match. Hs father tells Matt not to listen to the kids and to try to concentrate on his school ... ...to show off his excellent grades to his father but is shocked to find that his father is beating someone up! Matt runs away in tears and shock. Matt is not concentrating and ends up running into an accident and chemical biohazard Material is spilt all over him. Matt is taken to hospital where he finds out he was blind. As time goes on Matt discovers that although he has lost his eyesight all his other senses were in enhanced dramatically. The story ...
deanparkr 06.08.2007 (04.08.2007)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Daredevil (Director's Cut) (DVD)
Advantages: Impressive Cast, Good Outfits and Action Scenes Disadvantages: Lacklustre Lovestory, Too Few Gadgets
...their leather outfits. The Daredevil story line however isnt great, as it focuses on a kid who is bullied alot (I cant imagine Affleck being bullied) who is blinded when struck by a vat of chemicals on a construction site where his father formerly worked. He naturally develops super powers to go with his blindness and so decides to use this to avenge his fathers death ( a champion boxer who refused to throw a fight). He is met by some powerful figures ... ...both with their own unexplained superpowers. The settings are suitably bold and gloomy such as the evening cityscapes and gothic cathedrals which are also well used for the excellent action sequences. Farrell in particular steals the film as a particularly vicious skinhead hitman with a bad temper and a deadly throwing arm. The love affair between Affleck and Garner is a let down and evokes very little emotion. The main problem is that both suit ...
webtoolsclient1 24.04.2009 (08.05.2009)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful Review of Daredevil (Director's Cut) (DVD)
Advantages: better story line Disadvantages: Came too late
If you havent seen this movie you have missed something huge and unique! In my opinion this is one of the best "MARVEL" action movies ever! This story is about a young lawyer who is blind, but due to a tragic accident in his childhood his blindness compensates by giving him unique ability turning him into a live radar. So this hero takes on the city's criminal underworld by night, while in the day time he does the same by legal means. Action in this ... ...not as good as some of the new movies in the same categories. But it outruns its competitors by miles in story-telling. Directors cut however gives a even better story-telling, "its a story inside a story" . with over 30 minutes of added extras and previosly unseen original shoots and to cope it all a brand new character is shown in this version of the movie. ...
nisk7 11.10.2005
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful Review of Daredevil (Director's Cut) (DVD)
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Advantages: Lots of Marvel heroes Disadvantages: Elektra is not a great film
sees a young Matt Murdock blinded as a child only to have his remaining senses functioning at increased levels enabling him the resource?s he need's to become the crime fighting vigilante known as Daredevil. With his alter ego Daredevil fights to take down the King Pin, the most ruthless criminal in all of Hell's Kitchen.
Good film for what it is. It's no X-men or Spiderman but it is nevertheless and an enjoyable comic film. The director?scut allows for more action and even another character.
Elektra
This film sees the return of Daredevil's Elektra, who, it seems, has risen from the grave. Now she's back and is doing what she knows best, assassination contracts. Her life takes an interesting turn when she meets a young girl with interesting fighting capabilities.
This film is certainly the weakest in the bunch, it has some good ...
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment; Deluxe Video Service - Fox, 20TH CENTURY FOX HOME ENTERTAINMENT; CINRAM LOGISTICS
Release date
02/05/2005
No of Discs
1
Catalogue No
2905101000
Barcode
5039036020145
Screenwriter
Mark Steven Johnson
Languages
Main Language
English
Technical information
Sound
Dolby Digital
Special Features
Director's audio commentary
DVD Description
The latest Marvel Comics superhero to hit the big screen is Daredevil (Ben Affleck), a man blinded by a radioactive chemical accident as a young boy but left with superhuman senses and agile acrobatic ability. Like his Marvel compatriot Spider-Man, Daredevil attempts to lead a normal life by day as Matt Murdock, a Hell's Kitchen defence attorney. By night Matt becomes Daredevil, a brooding superhero fighting for justice in the dark and squalid New York streets overrun with vermin and criminal injustice. Wearing a red leather suit and mask, Daredevil leaps from high skyscrapers and tracks his enemies with his radar-like vision, punishing those who are guilty but who he cannot tackle in the courtroom. At the centre of the city's villainous underbelly is Daredevil's nemesis Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan), and his psychotic, knife-wielding deputy-assassin Bullseye (Colin Farrell). Daredevil fights their powerful forces alone, until he meets Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner of ALIAS fame), a skilled martial artist and sexy superheroine who is after Bullseye and Kingpin for murdering her father. Sparks fly as the two heroes take on the underlords of crime together in this action-packed adventure fantasy that will surely delight fans of SPIDER-MAN, X-MEN, or BATMAN.
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