Increasing Quality by Lowering Expecations.

I'm trying to decide if that's why I had such a fun time seeing DareDevil tonight or if the movie really did stand well on its own. I really wasn't expecting much from this one. I've found that traditionally that's the way to approach action/adventure movies this time of year (although I guess I'm starting to do that all year round now - I'm getting jaded...) Back to DareDevil: I had a great time, that's all there is to it. This was quite simply a super hero movie done well. I will qualify that a bit though - your friendly super hero isn't always so friendly in this film, and there is a serious body count. So if you can't handle senseless killing and some "not graphic on screen but they didn't leave any doubt about what happened" nasty violence then you might want to stay away - or at the least leave it for DVD. It will be less imposing on a smaller screen. Other then that you have everything you need: standard super-hero creation stuff, people filled with vengance, a guy who can't live a normal life because he has this gift he uses to do good - the norm. The key is everything was done with skill, and I'll even give the actors credit for some half decent martial arts stuff. Although, the fight scenes did suffer from low light (there's a plot reason for this) and choppy editing (there's a resource reason for this - Ben and Jennifer can't do the stuff the pro kung fu guys can do.) Overall it get's my seal of approval and goes into the ranks of the good superhero movies, although in the end I guess the bar for entrance to that club is pretty low given the competition.

Speaking of I was actually coming up with a list of the good superhero movies on the way out of the theater. Different people like different things but the best I can come up with is Batman (my favorite), Superman 2, X-Men, and SpiderMan (which I liked the least out of this list.) And really while I'm there I should say I consider Unbreakable to be a wonderful superhero movie but I won't expand in case you haven't seen it. Am I forgetting any solid superhero movies? I'll let my brain chug on that one for a few days...

Which leads me to my last rant. DareDevil really reminded me of how screwed up the MPAA rating system is. And I don't even have to go into the ridiculous distinctions they have between sex and violence. DareDevil has a huge body count. It has a scene where the good guy could obviously save someone but lets him die instead. It has a character that explicity states he kills for fun, has absolutely no concious, and leaves a swath of innocent bystanders dead in his wake. And like I hinted above there are lots of nasty things that happen where the audience knows full well what's going on, but the camera cuts away for the moment of truth (OT: I'm reminded of Steve Martin's talk of the money shot in Grand Canyon.) In short this doesn't feel like a movie that should be rated PG-13 - it's one of those that technically complies with the rating but certainly not its spirit.

Well, I guess that's enough for now. The bottom line about DareDevil - if you like superhero movies go see it, if you don't it'll be there for you soon enough on DVD and you can grab it when you don't want to think too much. But either way give a little shout out to Kevin Smith when he makes his cameo!

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