I watch a lot of superhero stuff. I spent my entire Sunday either watching the old Teen Titans cartoon or rewatching the Captain America movies. Something something American mythos something something fatigue. I’ve also claimed, way early on in this blog, that I’ve seen almost every superhero movie, ever. That’s… mostly true. I’ve seen every superhero movie from the past 20 years with a handful of exceptions. It took me a long while to get around to seeing some of the shittiest of them. The pocket lint of movies. The half-assed, muck of the gutter, hair wrapped around the drain snake movies. The stuff that makes you hurl.
The 2003 film with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner is one of these films.
Classic 90’s Camp in the 00’s
Among these big name stars, we find Michael Clarke Duncan as Kingpin, Jon Favreau as Froggy Nelson, and Ellen “Meredith Grey” Pompeo as Karen Page. The following screenshot from Google however, will have you miss the final, shocking cast member. Colin FUCKING Farrell as Bullseye.
The guy from In Bruges. The guy from Banshees of Inishirin. The Penguin from The Batman. The guy who I keep confusing with Colin Firth. That fucking guy.
I think there are two main issues with this movie, and if I had paid money to see this in a movie theater, I would have told everyone not to waste their time. I would have been mad. I would have been actually quite frustrated. Ripped off, even.
The first issue is the pacing and story structure are waaaay off. The film hits the second act, and in the space of a single night Daredevil fights: Elektra Nachios, Bullseye, and The Kingpin. He loses his first fight with a knife in his shoulder, wins the second fight by straight up murdering a guy, and wins the third fight with an uncharacteristically deep callback to an earlier scene.
I think that the writers pumped out the story, and on paper it hit the beats. Then someone edited out relatively important character chunks, started filming the action scenes, and then when they hit the editing room they realized they didn’t really have much of a movie. So then they went back and added a 30 minute long CGI fight sequence between the Daredevil and Bullseye in a church. Keep in mind, this fight occurs after Daredevil is mortally wounded by Elektra’s knife to his shoulder (I’m being sarcastic about this knife wound).
This fight is weird and out of place for two reasons. For the most part, throughout the film, the action is all real, and takes place on the ground, and is very 90’s themed. I’m talking lightning in the background, children cheering in the park, stuntmen parkouring over a camera, actors smirking as they move action. It’s campy. Then we get Firth and Affleck swinging around on a poorly CGI-ed church organ that is either 20 feet tall or 20 stories tall depending on what action needs to take place. It honestly looked like a Tom and Jerry skit at times. Then there’s Firth. Fucking Colin fucking Firth.
Idle Hands are the Devil’s Hands
This leads me to the second issue. The movie is camp, yes. But Firth? That boy is on DRUGS. Why is Bullseye licking his lips, and darting his eyes around, and killing old women by ricocheting a peanut into their mouths to choke them, and behaving like a children’s magician when unbending a paperclip? I mean. I think he knew. He knew how goofy this movie was. He enjoyed whirling his big black overcoat around and jumping across rooftops and sexually harassing Jennifer Garner. I think he knew that a guy with a literal bull’s eye carved into his forehead was going to look so dumb on screen. He knew. He didn’t care.
I have such an issue with Affleck though. If Matt Damon isn’t in the movie- if he isn’t writing or acting alongside- then Affleck does not give a shit. He’s mumbling his way through it all without a care in the world. At least Garner had to give it a try, considering patriarchy and the fleeting value of women after commodifying beauty in Hollywood. Affleck? That man is still making shit movies and not giving a shit.
So when the protagonist and the antagonist have already thrown in the towel (hehe boxing pun), there’s no use waiting for the bell (hehe boxing pun). I wouldn’t blame you if you knocked out (hehe boxing pun) during this movie because this film was more boring than an amateur boxing match between two old women (hehe boxing pun).
I give this movie a:
BAD
rating. Don’t watch it unless you’re a complete horndog for classic Garner.
Anyway here’s a link to clip from the movie where we see a lot of Garner boobies. Oh and by the way, I just- and I mean just discovered that there was a spinoff of this 2003 movie. They made an Elektra movie in 2005. What the fuck?!
You can watch Daredevil on Disney+
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