Daredevil, Hero with Human Weakness, with Little Charisma

A hero gets injured during a fight with a villain and takes a painkiller to ease the pain as he comes home. He is blind and his body is full of scars.

Daredevil, a fantasy action movie set to be released on March 28, looks more like the spider-man who has human weakness, rather than the superman from the outer space.

The movie is based on comic book `Marble Comics` published in 1964. Like the spider-man he lost his parents when he was very young and became superhuman in an accident. Exposed to nuclear wastes, he lost his eyesight but instead his senses develop extraordinarily.

Mathew Murdock (Ben Affleck) is a lawyer working for the weak during the day, but at night he turns into Daredevil, a devil fighting for justice. Then he meets one of his kind, Elektra (Jennifer Garner), and falls in love.

Elektra, as her name from Greek mythology suggests, is looking for a day of revenge for her dead father. And she thinks Daredevil is the one who killed her father and takes on her revenge.

Scenes of rainy dark New York streets convey religious images. In the first scene of the movie, bleeding Daredevil is hanging on a cross on the top of a cathedral. A coffin filled with water is a bed for the man who has extraordinary auditory sense.

Characters of the movie, however, come short of delivering those symbolic images and underlying messages. The images remain just the background of the movie.

It is like a mixture of the Batman and the Spider-man, but the movie appears lost somewhere in between – between the uniquely grisly images from the Batman and dynamic actions from the Spider-man.

When a hero becomes too human, he is bound to lose his heroic charisma. Daredevil knows whether a witness lies or not by listening to his or her heartbeats. Still he loses his cases often times. That is why his life at night looks like vent-out of frustration and anger.

Jennifer Garner, who plays Elektra, is so clumsy about conveying emotion that she sometimes even looks comic.

Daredevil lets the king of crimes Kingpin (Michael Clock Duncun) go at the last moment although he could easily kill him. Why? `Because he is a true hero.` A newspaper reporter chooses not to write a story about Daredevil, or Mathew, despite his long search. Why? `Because there will be always a hero in this big city.`

The underlying reason, however, must be `because they have to make a sequel.` Directed by Mark Steve Johnson who made his debut with `the Simon Beach.` Daredevil means a person who takes dangerous risks in a careless way. Aged for 15 or over.

Hee-Kyung Kim susanna@donga.com