TV Review: Daredevil

I am not the best person to be giving an opinion about the new Netflix series Daredevil, because I am one of the few people who LIKED the Ben Affleck/Jennifer Garner version (the sequel, Elektra, was a total disaster).  I thought Affleck was good in the role, had undeniable chemistry with Garner (unusual for an off-screen couple) and Michael Duncan Clarke was an inspired choice to play Kingpin.  Okay, maybe Colin Farrell was a tad “off” as Bulls-eye, but I enjoyed it.

It would be wrong to say Netflix has “reimagined” the story, because it’s still produced my Marvel and they don’t need to reimagine anything (unless you count the parallel universes and all the other alternate versions of things).  It is still the story of a blind lawyer who fights injustice by day and criminal thugs by night.

Charlie Cox plays Matt Murdoch, the son of a tough but not very good boxer who is blinded as a child in a chemical spill.  He loses his sight but gains enhanced other senses, even more than Master Po on Kung Fu.  After graduating top of his class from Columbia Law School he joins he friend Foggy (really?) in opening a law firm in Hell’s Kitchen, where he grew up. His main opponents are gentrification and urban development, which of course are evil.  God forbid we tear down some slums and put up condos.

The showrunner is Drew Goddard, who worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well as Angel, Lost and Alias, so he knows dark and violent.  When I say the show is dark, I don’t mean metaphorically.  I mean you will be tempted to adjust your TV settings and bump up the Brightness to 9.  The look is unique to television, where even shows set at midnight have to make every actor’s teeth visible.

What distinguishes Daredevil (although he isn’t called that, at least not in the first three episodes) from the other Marvel superheroes is that he does not have superpowers.  After an encounter with a gang of criminal that set a trap for him, he is barely able to move.  What he does have is his father’s ability to take a licking and keep on ticking, but he can’t ignore all the blows he takes like Thor or Captain America do.  In fact one of the least credible things about the show is not that a blind guy can beat up seven burly criminals, but that he can go into work the next day and not look like a walking bruise.

The fight choreography is spectacular.  Several reviews have singled out a sequence in the second episode where Daredevil takes on a half dozen thugs in a hallway in a scene shot in a single take.  This is beyond movie fight arrangement.  My only complaint about the fight sequences is that they are usually too dark to make out who is punching or kicking whom.

While I admire the first three episodes, I do have a number of issues (in addition Murdoch fighting a dozen guys and looking okay the next morning; even the magazine ads show him sporting raw knuckles and a split lip).  The character of Foggy, as in the movie, is such an obvious second banana it is hard to take him seriously as a character.  The actor makes in painfully clear he knows he is the comic relief, something that completely escapes a character such as J. Jonah Jameson.  Also, would you hire a lawyer named Foggy?  Maybe these guys would do more good by getting six-figure jobs at the firm in Suits and giving money to stop the developers in Hell’s Kitchen.

I am not sold on Vincent D’Onofrio as Kingpin, known here by his proper name Wilson Fisk.  D’Onofrio is a great actor, but even with a shaved head he lacks Duncan’s physical presence.  But I’ve only watched three episodes and he’s only been on screen for less than five minutes, so I’ll wait.

I suspect a lot of people will find the reality-based superheroics of Matt Murdoch preferable to the elevated machinations of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, and I understand that.  It’s just that I find reality concerns slipping in, where on Agents of Shield I turn my logic circuits off and accept it.  How does he know where to go?  Why doesn’t anybody shoot him?  If he gets stabbed and his lung collapses, should he be okay the next day?  It’s entertaining, but ultimately the questions start impinging on my enjoyment.

But not eliminating it.  I will finish out the 13 episode run, and see if Matt Murdoch comes back for more.  Maybe the vicissitudes of being on a non-broadcast medium will do what all the thugs in Hell’s Kitchen can’t do—stop Daredevil.