DAREDEVIL


CAST: Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Michael Clarke Duncan, Colin Farrell, Jon Favreau, Joe Pantoliano, David Keith, Scott Terra

DIRECTOR: Mark Steven Johnson

"Affleck, with his genial, smirking baby face and light throwaway voice, hardly seems as if he has the devil inside. He may date the hottest sex symbol of the corporate infotainment age, but he comes off as the last guy in America who would put on aleather jumpsuit in public. Maybe that's why the funk-dominatrix getup seems to be wearing HIM... ‘Daredevil’ is the sort of half-assed, visually lackadaisical potboiler that makes you rue the day that comic-book franchises ever took over Hollywood. Most of the images are sludgy and labored, with New York looking more ordinary and, at the same time, more fake than the Gotham City of Tim Burton's‘Batman’…the one actor who looks like he's honestly having fun is Colin Farrell. He plays Bullseye the Irish assassin with a motorcycle thug's shaved head and goatee, a yob's growl, and coal eyes that dance with malevolence …Farrell, a dreamboat who isn't hung up on vanity, does what he can to give his scenes a mad-dog charge." --Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

"… stripped to the barest of bone and made palatable if all one craves is brawl after skirmish after fight after bloody murder… one more dark, dingy, shambling story about people in costumes who beat hell out of each other because that's what people in costumes do…A shame Johnson couldn't give the movie over to Bullseye, since Farrell displays more danger with a cocked brow and sharpened pencil than Affleck with pages of melodramatic mush he can't force out without sounding like a high-school drama student with a sore throat…Farrell's killer is cold and menacing -- genuinely fucking nuts, totally bereft of humanity." --Robert Wilonsky, Dallas Observer

"Farrell, his villainous Bullseye half mutant ninja leprechaun and half Ben Kingsley in ‘Sexy Beast,’ is at that stage of the game where he can do anything and get away with it-- not just because he does it well and with relish, but because he isn't yet yoked to the star machine that will take his good looks, talent and energy and turn him into a Ben Affleck."
--John Anderson, Newsday

"The movie is certainly the most violent of the comic book superhero genre…Its body count is high, and the victims mostly get stabbed or slashed to death, in ways uncomfortably graphic for its PG-13 rating. It's film noir crossed with psycho fever dreams, and it certainly lacks the joy and jokiness of ‘Spider-Man’…Compared with Colin Farrell's flagrant impersonation of Charlie Manson on angel dust, Affleck's broody narcissism feels undernourished…What you believe in, however, is the charisma of Farrell, not quite but soon to be a star. Though he's only in it a bit, he dominates those scenes and he does something Affleck can't manage: By his presence and demonism, he makes you believe his gimmick…while he's up there, in his brogue, doing his creepy punk undulation and wild-eyed rover boy, he is convincing." --Stephen Hunter, The Washington Post

"Affleck and ‘Alias’ star Jennifer Garner don't generate much heat in their scenes together --they seem more like chums or virginal grade-school sweethearts than lovers. But they're such extraordinary physical specimens it's an undeniable pleasure to watch them suck face in the rain or pound each other senseless…There are efforts to tell a story in ‘Daredevil,’ but they're pretty clueless, as if the filmmakers were only remotely familiar with the standard techniques of either comic books or movies." --Andrew O’Hehir, Salon

"The movie is actually pretty good. Affleck and Garner probe for the believable corners of their characters, do not overact, are given semi-particular dialogue, and are in a very good-looking movie. Most of the tension takes place between the characters, not the props…The movie is, in short, your money's worth, better than we expect, more fun than we deserve." --Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times