February 14, 2003

Just how bad can Daredevil be if it gives Harry Knowles a “geek woody?”

Pretty bad.

Daredevil is one of those movies that looks like a movie, sounds like a movie and tells you it’s a movie… but it is, in truth, a pale imitation of a movie.  Worse, it is a literal imitation of movie after movie.  Where The Matrix took the history of film and reconfigured it into a new, magical creation, Daredevil just steals the punchlines (comedic and dramatic, spoken and visual) from a bunch of movies and leaves you laughing, crying or screaming at the echo.  Most people won’t even notice that they are experiencing a haunted house instead of a movie. 

It makes you wonder whether a movie needs to have any originality in it to work for mainstream audiences.  Obviously, there are filmic archetypes that repeat.  The movie musical, the romantic comedy, the Cinderella story, the cowboy hero, etc, etc, etc.  What I’m talking about is far more specific. 

For instance, where is this exchange from?  “I didn’t catch your name.”  “I didn’t drop it.”  Cute, huh?  But why is it in Daredevil when people have used variations of it in movie after movie.  Better is the exchange during a fight, “Does everybody have to go through this to get your name?” “Try asking for my number.”  But there is a lot more of the former, used up element than the more clever, aware-of-the-unique situation stuff. 

Form Batman, you get the made up “I created you/You created me” stuff that pissed so many people off about The Joker’s involvement in the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents.  Daredevil is, unfortunately, a triple origin movie and all three central characters are dependent on one another for their alter egos.

Not reliant on anyone but himself is the one strong character in the film, Colin Farrell’s Bullseye.  He is over the top and a joy to watch… and on screen for less than 10 minutes.  Bullseye is a simple character.  He throws stuff with accuracy.  He’s a pub-hopping party boy egomaniac.  And he’s a tool of others. 

While all but one of the Bullseye exchanges makes sense – the entire character motivation is hinged on avenging a “miss” caused by Daredevil yet he misses later and the moment simply passes – not every sequence does.  Taking the worst element of James Bond films and increasing the absurdity by 10, Daredevil can not only sense what he cannot see, he can avoid the bullets of multiple machine guns, shot guns and hand guns in a small interior space.  Fascinating.

But this same bullet avoiding God is later sold as man so real that he needs to take tranquilizers to sleep… to shut out the world.  Wow!  How real!  They show how he folds each bill differently so he can tell the difference between a 5 and a 20.  Cool.  But then is about to leap 40 or 50 feet through the air… to dive 500 feet off a building and then grab a wire without slicing off his fingers… to magically change from a tuxedo into his leatherman garb and follow moving vehicle speeding through the streets of Manhattan on foot.

You want to know exactly what’s wrong with this movie?  You’ve seen the ads where Joey Pants is being told that there is no evidence that any Daredevil exists.  J.P. throws his cigarette on the ground, igniting a large, flaming DD.  You see the reflection in his glasses.  So what’s the problem?  1. This version of Daredevil makes no suggestion of the ego or interest in spreading fear that such an overt display would suggest. 2. Mark Stephen Johnson uses the something-in-the-glasses gag no less than four times in the film, as though they were taking the gag off the shelves after this movie.  3. The scene in which gasoline was spread all over the place makes the possibility of such a display pretty much impossible.

“But it looks so cool!”

That’s the problem with the film.  Sound and fury signifying less than nothing.

Don’t even get me started on The Kingpin.  Forget any loyalty to the fabulously bizarre character that can lift cars and such without much effort.  Stealing a page from Burton’s Batman again, Kingpin is just a regular guy, albeit a really big one.  But he’s also important enough to have a 100-story building with his name etched across the top. Too bad he couldn’t afford a bigger office with more than one piece of furniture in it.  (I guess he spent all the money on lighting.)  But worse, Kingpin is a kind of all-purpose boogie man, who controls skid row gambling collections as well as Wall Street.  Unfortunately, his character feels like he’s been built to simply fill in the quiet spaces wherever they are. 

Then there is the story structure.  This is a movie that cleverly puts Daredevil right up front, but mostly it’s because the character will take a full 25 minutes before he really becomes a part of the movie.  Kingpin is a peripheral character until the end.  Bullseye, as I wrote, gets less than 10 minutes of screentime.  And Electra doesn’t head out in hero garb until late in the third act.

Another example – the “meet cute” in Daredevil is first, a man smelling a woman.  Then, he pursues her, even though she has made it clear that she is not interested.  He then stalks her until she tries to get rid of him physically.  When he overpowers her, it turns her on.  It is shot like a dance number, but it is a fight.  But that’s okay… she also sleeps with him on their first and only date.  Great female role model.

And how about that lovely effect that allows Daredevil to “see.”  The film establishes that it is a form of radar and that rain, hitting in multiple spots at the same time, can allow him to form a near-visual image of a person.  But why can he see the expression in Electra’s eyes, which does’nt get hit by rain?  

“But it’s so cool!”

But it makes no sense!

I’m not a comic book basher.  I grew up on Daredevil and Iron Man and Spider-Man and Batman and Superman and The Hulk.  Some Thor.  Silver Surfer when I could find him.  Loved Ben Grimm, even if the rest of The Fantastic Four was too nice-guy wimpy for me.

There is an enormous suspension of disbelief when you see a comic book movie.  It is silly to ask too many questions.  But even a comic book movie needs to live up to its own logic.  South Park: Longer, Bigger & Uncut did.  The first two Batman films did, even if Joker’s parade in Gotham City was kind of lame. And major story points of Daredevil count on audiences overlooking the obvious.

One of the great moments in any comic book movie is when Bruce Wayne and Selena Kyle each realize that the other one is really Batman/Catwoman.  No such luck in Daredevil.  They’ve fought and they’ve had sex, but she doesn’t recognize the blind guy until she pulls off his mask.  And if you think that is a spoiler, trust me, it’s not.

The point of all of this is that if all you need is the most surface of surface, you might like Daredevil.  If you choose to think about it for a second… if stolen ideas bother you… if you wonder about things like why a 20-year-old in great shape can’t get out of a car as quickly as a 50-year-old man who is out of shape… you can’t. 

It’s not Plan 9 from Outer Space, but in some ways, it is worse. 

WEEKEND PREVIEW

What’s the difference between getting an Oscar nomination and not?  Well, four of the Best Picture nominees added a total of 1722 screens between them.  Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers gave up 258 screens in spite of its nomination, while Adaptation added 257 in spite of not getting the big one. 

The non-nominated droppers include About Schmidt (off 32 venues), Antwone Fisher (off 254 venues), Far From Heaven (off 21 screens – more than 15 percent of its overall count) and Narc, which lost a horrifying 400 screens, left with only 79.

WEEKEND GUESSTIMATES

1. Daredevil  - 3471 venues – new - $38.9 million
2. Chicago  - 2268 venues – up 30 percent - $14 million
3. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days – 2923 venues – off 43 percent - $13.6 million
4. Shanghai Knights - 2755 venues – off 42 percent - $11.4 million
5. The Jungle Book 2 - 2808 venues – new - $10.8 million
6. The Recruit - 2336 venues – off 49 percent - $4.7 million
7. The Hours - 1003 venues – n/a - $4 million
8. Final Destination 2 - 2238 venues – off 54 percent - $3.9 million
9. Deliver Us from Eva - 1139 venues – off 52 percent - $3.2 million
10. The Two Towers - 1422 venues – off 15 percent - $3 million
The Pianist - 557 venues – up 40 percent - $1.4 million
Gangs of New York - 1503 venues - up 35 percent – $1.2 million

READER OF THE DAY:  MOVIELAND MYSTERY DATE writes: 

Thanks for some sanity about the preponderance of inaccurate reporting on the garlands laid before that original Fat Bastard: Harvey (Caesar) Weinstein. I can overlook in this person many things: lying, duplicity, theft, hubris, however, but not for being so ugly one wants to beat him with a stick.

Have you noticed any similarity between what Dubya is up to and what shall be known as the Impending Unpleasantness. I read somewhere that the genius of the current bunch of Gangsters Who Stole The Last Election was that they have made war with Iraq appear an inevitability (with the full connivance of their accomplices the media - war being good for ratings).
Here’s my question Is Dubya Harvey’s portrait of Dorian Grey?

Has Harvey done the same wool-pulling act over a frightened and compliant Academy with Chicago?  Is it really as inevitable as it seems? What is Warren Beatties take on the matter?  Where are Robbins and Sarandon for Chrissakes, now that we need them? Shouldn’t any self-respecting humanist immediately protest this? Should Sean Penn forget his squabble with Bing and head immediately Jesse Jackson-like to Beverley Hills for a fact-finding tour?

My point was really that the Oscars are a mirror to the kind of society we live in now, and that without some kind of vocal objection we get what we deserve.  Not great films being paraded as the best thing since sliced bread while genuinely exciting and heartfelt nuggets of artistic endeavor are ghettoized. Business behemoths and the servile compliance of media outlets ensure that film (war) is about the coordinated search of money (oil), first and last. This is a great land of diversity which is having the lifeblood squeezed from it because corporate culture has become the dominant culture. Might is right and there’s an ass for every seat, whether you’re an academy voter or a disenfranchised Floridian.

The bigger and more outrageous the lie, the easier it seems to put it over on the masses. ‘Quality’ in film, is what we the people are told it is, by Harvey, by Bush, by Rick Lyman...by Joan Fucking Rivers even.  The truly radical stance is to not only point out this discrepancy between reality and the current Pravda-like reporting of entertainment ‘business’ but also to say ‘this is wrong’.

Anyhow...the best films directed films I saw this year were Y Tu Mama Tambien, Bloody Sunday, Adaptation and City Of God.

On the other side of the aisle, BACK FROM THE DEAD writes:  “Okay, isn't it about time to stop blaming Harvey for everything that's wrong with film, or at least the Oscars?  Yeah, his campaigning probably pushed other films out of the running.  Is that his fault?  He may have marred Gangs of New York and robbed Scorsese of some of his vision (a just accusation).  But you know what?  Without Harvey the film might never have been made at all.  At least give him props for giving money to people for art films with a wider scope.  Do you see another studio funding Frida?  Or Gangs?  Or Chicago?  Or The English Patient?

More importantly, doesn't the man have the right to promote and campaign for his films as hard as possible?  It's not like he's the first to do so.  The fact that he's not running a major studio means he has to work that much harder to be heard.  I'm sick of hearing about the whole "stole the Oscar from Saving Private Ryan" bullshit, too.  Does anyone know that Dreamworks spent MORE money campaigning for SPR than Miramax did for Shakespeare in Love?  Do they?  Because SIL was a less popular film with a smaller  demographic and smaller stars, Harvey may have spent more RELATIVELY.  But the dollar amount was less.  So what's the big deal?  Yell at Spielberg for being a sore loser even though he got the trophy that Terence Malick deserved.  No one seems to realize that SPR was one of two WWII films that year, and a lot of people preferred the other one.  The vote split, and Shakespeare won. 

SPR was a technically well-done film with a VERY weak script, questionable themes, and only one or two good performances.  It was all about the first 20 minutes.  The framing story with the old man was TERRIBLE.  Shakespeare in Love had at least 6 fantastic performances, a brilliant screenplay that mixed highbrow and lowbrow humor, and actually had some interesting things to say about love and the creative process.  So why is that so unworthy of praise?  It was better than Driving Miss Daisy.

Criticize the nomination process if you must, but don't blame Harvey for having more money to spend than Focus Features.  Maybe the academy members should be forced to go to the actual theatres (instead of watching DVDs or tapes), and each film they see will be registered on a card in their name.  If they haven't seen enough of the eligible films, they aren't allowed to vote.  How's that?  Maybe what's wrong is that some 80 year old, has-been actor completely out of touch with today's world is allowed to nominate and vote, when film journalists such as David Poland, Manhola Dargis, Andrew Sarris, and Jonathan Rosenbaum have no say at all.  Who studies film more?  Who watches a wider range of material, including international cinema?  There's the fucking problem right there.

Considering the makeup of the academy, you should be thanking the heavens that films like Adaptation, or even The Hours for that matter are considered for ANYTHING.  And when we see Y Tu Mama Tambien or Talk To Her get recognized we snort like it was an entitlement.  Blame the Spanish and Mexican film boards for fucking their own best product.   Stop blaming people like Harvey, whose JOB it is to promote his own output, and take aim at the assholes who give oscars to lukewarm fare like Chariots of Fire over Reds, or give an ACTING oscar to Roberto Bengini.”

E ME:  Ah, but how do you think that Roberto got that Oscar?  I know lots of you are going to see Daredevil… tell me all about it.  And pick a side in The Academy aWARds.