DAREDEVIL

Rating: 1

Maybe it’s time to say something out loud that many of us have been thinking about Ben Affleck’s career at least since PEARL HARBOR. The only thing that could possibly explain why it refuses to die the death it so richly deserves is that Mr. Affleck must have at some point made a pact with the devil.  Maybe if we all say in unison, “Get the behind me, Satan,” burn some sage, sprinkle some holy water and chant OM, we can put a stop to it and then it will be just that much safer to venture into your local multiplex.
This particular infernal explanation comes to mind, naturally enough, after seeing Mr. Affleck’s latest effort, DAREDEVIL. In it he wears a tight leather body suit and a cowl with just the most darling pair of teeny tiny horns you ever saw. And if he would just stand there and leave all the acting to his dramatically cleft chin, things might rise to mediocre. Alas, he speaks, and when he speaks, Thespia weeps.
But this is an action flick, so points lost on acting can be made up with spiffy explosions and high-flying martial arts acrobatics. Again, there’s a problem. Mr. Affleck has chosen for his co-star Jennifer Garner, the kick-butt star of ALIAS. This is an actress in serious battle shape and after her character and Mr. Affleck’s engage in the martial-arts-as-foreplay sequence, it becomes painfully obvious that even with careful editing, CGI, and who knows what other kind of movie magic, Ms Garner could stomp the bejeezus out of him without breaking a sweat or even mussing her hair.  And this is before we get to the part where she twirls knives with all the precision abandon of a Benihana chef during the lunch rush. Perhaps this is why the action sequences are so heavily edited into quick cuts and the lights are kept very low at all times. To make matters worse, the climactic battle in a church has the people and things flying through the air so badly rendered by the effects people that it looks as though it were a video game with sub-standard resolution. Even the best of the effects that have Daredevil leaping from the tops of skyscripers to the sidewalk are like a crude prototype for SPIDERMAN and make one ponder why he didn’t just take the elevator. As for the visual rendering of how Daredevil sees with a hopped-up sort of sonar has it’s X-ray eerie moments, after the first gazillion times, it loses a bit of its luster.
With an action flick, sometimes the script is the last consideration of all concerned and that certainly seems to have been the case here. Though working with the Stan Lee comic and, more, working with his storyline of how the Daredevil, the blind super hero whose other senses are kicked into hyperdrive, got to be a crime fighter in a cute costume, you’d think that there would be a lot to work with. Think again. While writer/director Mark Steven Johnson does a fine job of reproducing the ambiance of the graphic novel, full of strong colors and perspective-twisting camera angles, he has imbued it with all the drama and thrills of Little Lulu. The dark night of Daredevil’s justice-seeking soul has all the shading nuance of a mud puddle. And just as much depth. Though no writing can help when Mr. Affleck attempts to looks anguished and succeeds only in looking as though he’s got an annoying piece of gristle caught in his teeth. The one bright spot is Jon Favreau as the law-partner sidekick to Daredevil’s alter ego, crusading lawyer for the underdog, Matt Murdock. One suspects that Favreau wrote his own lines, so rife are they with wit and personality as his character forever whines about wanting clients who pay in cash, not fish. 
Oh yeah, the story. It’s the usual. Big bad villain (Michael Clarke Duncan) doing big bad things and no one can stop him except our hero. Though why Johnson would actually have them duke it out when he could just have Mr. Affleck’s badly acted exposition render him insensible, I don’t know.  
But I digress.
There’s also the psycho henchman, in this case Colin Farrell, who, to be fair, does do menacing really well even when forced to do things like fling lethal peanuts and mouth such memorable lines as “I never miss,” which is, of course, the obvious set up for, well, you know. Heaven forbid there should be a spark of originality.
And heaven forbid that there should be a sequel to this.