Travis returns from a much-needed bathroom break, cracks another one open and resumes his live-blog of the 2003 Daredevil movie. The following has been edited for coherence, but retains the writers’ original vision of the post.

In case you missed the first part, you can check it out here.

01:05:51 – I am a SUCKER for superheroes getting caught doing violence in front of kids. It’s the kind of situation that illustrates just how far outside the margins these people work in. “I’m not the bad guy, kid.” Does he even believe it?

01:07:00 – Matt retreats to the cathedral from the beginning of the movie. During a conversation with the priest, he senses a train and visualizes it running through the church. I’m not entirely sure if this is supposed to have a secondary meaning to it, and if so, what that could possibly be. Bah-bah-bah-beer-beer-beer-beer…

01:08:00 – Karen Page! She’s important in the comics. I promise I’ll write something about it that explains her significance.

01:12:00 – Matt and Foggy meet the Kingpin, as Matt refuses to consult for his firm on the grounds that, “We only defend those that are innocent,” to which the Kingpin replies, “Nobody is innocent.” Again, Matt’s life of extremes makes him a compelling character to watch – although difficult to agree with. As the main protagonist in a superhero movie, this is a rarity. Matt is not a child who is coming of age (Spider-Man), or pseudo-omniscient being whose methods we implicitly trust (Superman, Batman). He is a grown man with an extremely flawed view of the world, struggling to maintain some kind of integrity that I’m not even sure can exist in the modern world. In the case of some of the sneering thugs from earlier in the film he may be right (re: their innocence), but I think the Kingpin has a point here on the ambiguity of the situation.

"Ass to ass."

INTERMISSION – As I continue to watch it, I’m finding that this movie’s strengths are in smaller scenes and short bits of dialogue that are just buried underneath a million action-movie clichés. There’s more world building than I had remembered, and I’m now very drawn into the ideas and scenes surrounding Hell’s Kitchen. Things like boxing and organized crime. I don’t really buy the love story in this form, and I think that there’s maybe just a tiny bit too much going on in the plot to develop it completely. There are little hints of insight into these characters that have been snuck in, it seems, at the expense of creating an action-movie/love-story hybrid that doesn’t entirely work as either one of those two things.

INTERMISSION 2 – Okay, I tried to do alternate casting for a do-over of this movie, and all I could come up with was Mila Kunis (or Emily Blunt) as Elektra and Steve Buscemi as Ben Urich. I’m terrible at that game. And has Steve Buscemi ever played a down-on-his-luck metropolitan reporter before? I feel like this is something he could do well.

01:18:00 – Jesus, if there is anything I would change about this movie it would be the soundtrack. No Evanescence yet, but I’m still braced for its terribleness.

01:20:00 – Bullseye killing someone with Daredevil’s billy-club works similarly in the comics. Irrational Catholic guilt +10 for Daredevil. Also, if the death of Elektra’s father is supposed to be so important, they should have built up their father/daughter relationship more.

01:22:00 – Matt trashes the Daredevil-cave.

01:23:00 – Kingpin’s security-guard turnover must be about 24 hours per guard due to brutal in-house murders. As well, his use of the term ‘Man Without Fear’ is kind of unearned, since he’s never really met Daredevil. As far as arch-nemeses go, this is kind of impersonal. AND: As per my previous pro-camp statement on Bullseye, “I want a fuckin’ costume” is a line that works more than I thought it would.

01:24:10 – After Coolio testifies “I was so high, I can’t remember anything” (I am absolutely serious, he says these words in a courtroom in this movie), I was really expecting the song “Because I Got High” to start playing at full volume. Coolio’s testimony, and Foggy thumbing through a stack of legal briefs in Braille would make an amazing video remix of that song.

"Smoking weed, mostly." -Dante Jackson

Coolio clarifies: “Smoking weed, mostly.” From what I can tell, the theatrical cut mostly suffered from decreased hilarity.

01:26:14 – ENTER EVANESCENCE! Although not the song I expected. Some piano ballad at Elektra’s father’s funeral. Elektra is making the rounds, starting with Matt Murdock, telling (presumably) everyone that they don’t understand how it feels because she is the first person in the world to ever be orphaned ever. She puts up an umbrella as the rain starts to fall (CALLBACK WHAT-WHAT), so that Matt can’t see her, representing Matt not seeing her emotionally. [Sober edit: University students! Drunk Travis will edit your papers for $30 a pop!]

01:33:43 – ENTER KEVIN SMITH YOU LITTLE BITCHES. Guy looks thinner than I thought he would be, and seems really excited to be at the morgue discovering Daredevil’s super weapons.

01:35:00 – ENTER EVANESCENCE AGAIN! This time the song I know, over Elektra’s training sequence. I still don’t really buy it – it may just be that I don’t care for training and gearing-up montages. This is some truly ridiculous shit, with Elektra slicing open some sand-bags all over her dead father’s beautiful hardwood floor. I fear for the movie from this point on.

01:37:00 – I don’t really even like the overdone brass for Daredevil’s “rooftop” music. It feels like it has been done before, but better. If The Dark Knight taught me anything, it’s that film music in action flicks should be texturally diverse – that is, the music should be done with different arrangements to suit the mood of the flick. Sherlock Holmes did this brilliantly, and I think a boring score is one of Daredevil’s weaknesses.

01:38:00 – I know that Elektra’s post-fall fight scene with Daredevil is supposed to be a callback to that terrible playground scene, but there isn’t really anything that indicates that visually. The acting takes a turn for the worse here. Also, who in New York’s ghettoes hangs their laundry out to dry overnight? I don’t even think I would do that in any of the tame Canadian cities I’ve lived in.

01:40:00 – Elektra unmasking Daredevil shouldn’t make her immediately regret stabbing him. I want her to be more of a moral hard-liner, continuing her grudge with Matt Murdock. Bullseye enters, and I realize that there is a lot of stabbing in this movie.

01:42:00 – Although the FX in this whole scene look pretty rough, Bullseye killing Elektra with her own Sai is an iconic moment in the comics. Drawn by Frank Miller, the visual of a featured woman getting stabbed through her torso was considered over-the-top at the time (not to mention violently sexual), and is still considered a turning point for Daredevil, leading to some very dark places in the years to come.

01:42:50 – Holy crap the Police Helicopter pilot is JFK. “Put-ah yoah hands on yoah head.” Hot-Cops storm the roof, and we’re back at the beginning of the movie with Daredevil in the Cathedral.

01:48:50 – DD backflipping to avoid a few dozen glass-shards being thrown at him by Bullseye doesn’t make sense. It happens all the time in these movies (see Spider-Man). I worry about children that will grow up thinking this will shield them from harm. KIDS: Backflips do not make you invincible.

01:50:50 – A rooftop sniper shoots Bullseye through the hands. Don’t they have to have a decent shot before firing? How does this cop see through the stain-glass of the Cathedral? When will we hear the end of Daredevil’s shitty musical theme? Bullseye gets thrown through a roof, as Dardevil leaves to take down the newly-discovered Kingpin.

"Hey! said my name is called disturbance / I'll shout and scream, I'll kill the king, I'll rail at all his servants"

01:52:10 – On why the Kingpin would fight DD with his bare-hands: “I was raised in the Bronx, Wesley. This is something you wouldn’t understand.” I feel with a bit more build-up, this is a line that could have worked significantly better.

01:52:40 – Ben Urich is like Alexander Knox in Batman ’89. The unsung hero of the film. Ben is a fantastic and well-utilized character in Brian Michael Bendis’ run on Daredevil, and I highly recommend you all buy it with your moneycards.

01:54:13 – Daredevil enters Kingpin’s office, looking about 4-feet tall compared to our giant antagonist. It’s kind of a cartoonish fight, but one with (thankfully) less of an emphasis on gymnastics than the previous one. I’m half expecting a visual flashback to Matt’s boxer father before the end.

01:55:50 – Jesus, everyone in this movie rips of Daredevil’s mask. Even Kevin Smith. “You’re that blind-lawyer, and shit…”

01:57:30 – Matt decides to show mercy to the Kingpin, something that many superhero movies hadn’t dealt with before this. The Batman of the 1990s is an unrepentant killer. Supervillains often fell victim to ‘accidental’ deaths in other films, relieving their heroes of the choice to kill or spare their foes (Spider-Man comes to mind). Matt Murdock making a choice to leave the Kingpin alive despite an obvious advantage shows the conclusion of his arc: “I’m not the bad guy.” I found this refreshing at the time.

01:58:50 – “Yeah? Go ahead, tell the guys at Rikers how you got beat by a blind man. It’d be like blood in the water.” This is kind of great, and a little cathartic for the audience watching good people get trampled on for two hours.

2:00:10 – Daredevil throws down a rose where his father died. Coolio is released and hugs Favreau. Matt remembers Elektra in the Coffee Shop. Ben Urich finally confronts Matt Murdock about Daredevil. The Kingpin is in jail and Bullseye is paralysed. If you’ve read this far you shouldn’t care about spoilers.

2:03:00 – Matt’s inner monologue teaches us that, “The battle of Good versus Evil is never-ending, because Evil always survives with the help of Evil Men.” Even at the conclusion of the film, Matt Murdock has something to say that I consider mildly disturbing. Hasn’t Matt himself done enough damage as well? What about the costs that good men incur on society – Bullseye’s paralysis, defrauding the Justice system, and even the unmentioned disruption of Kingpin’s legitimate businesses? People gotta eat! This is a film that brings these questions to the table and refuses to answer them, or really even tease them out to a satisfactory point. I don’t believe that the amount of subplots and/or characters contributed to the film being over-stuffed, but this is a movie that could’ve benefited greatly from taking those moral questions a step or two further.

02:05:00 – Matt finds jewellery he recognizes from Elektra – in Braille! Their secret language!

02:06:00 – Ben Urich’s decision to leave Daredevil’s identity anonymous seems unearned as well. I believe their relationship needed more work. Other than the one victory Daredevil seemed to afford the city (The Kingpin and Bullseye in jail), I’m not convinced that Urich would retract his story on Daredevil’s true identity based on that alone.

02:06:44 – And cue Evanescene for the outro. I think. I dunno, a lot of these bands sound similar.

02:06:50 – Oh, this is Fuel. I have two of their CDs. Speaking of which, does anyone want to buy two Fuel CDs for $1?

CONCLUSION: I think that “Daredevil” has always had great potential on the silver screen. As previously mentioned, Matt Murdock is a fascinating character of great conviction (and contradiction) whose actions raise a number of moral and ethical questions – At what point can a member of society break the law and remain a part of it, or an administrator of it? Is Matt a liar for swearing by the law and acting as Daredevil by night? What level of moral relativism and ambiguity can we accept in society? Highlight the next invisible line of text for the answers!A)     Anytime. B) No, he’s just an asshole. C) None! Break out your billy-clubs everybody, and meet me on the rooftops!

There was some dynamite casting in this movie, whose only sins were that they were given occasionally mediocre material. I honestly can’t think of anyone else to play Foggy Nelson other than Favreau, and I believe that Farrell’s depthless Bullseye is mostly misunderstood. Affleck did alright, although I feel like he and Jennifer Garner were the weak links in the ensemble.

I worry that a rebooted version would lose some of the light charm that the supporting cast brought. Matt’s life in comic-book form is no picnic, and one has to wonder if summertime theatre-goers would have the stomach for a straight up adaptation of something like “Born Again” or “The Man Without Fear.” I realize that I am referring to source material that many are not familiar with, so I will likely write some analysis on a few key Daredevil comics in the near future. Daredevil books have over the years attracted some top-tier talent, so I can say with certainty that the number of five-star stories about Matt Murdock are not in short-supply.

Go read some damn comics now, fools.