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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Villano" data-source="post: 715477" data-attributes="member: 505">I just saw the movie yesterday.  If you read the 2 DD Reviews thread, you may have noticed that I was more than a bit worried due to the casting of Affleck, the trailer, the costumes, and some clips I've seen.THUD! That was the sound of my jaw hitting the floor.  This movie was good.  Damn good.  Watching this, I felt the same way I did during the original Batman and X-Men.But, before I get to my thoughts on the film, here's what I thought of the coming attractions:Willard.  A remake of the crazy guy with his army of rats film.  They had me up until the cat gets killed.  It starts comedic, then turns into this long, drawn out scene in which the cat tries to get away.  It's totally unnecessary.  It gets worse with the shot of the woman pulling down her pants to go to the toilet. Why is this in the trailer?I completely hated it by the time they got to the moment with the elevator full of rats.  It would be a cool scene in vampire movie, but looks stupid here.  I had no idea if it's supposed to be horror or comedy.  Not a good sign.I'm guessing this film will be this year's Planet Of The Apes (i.e., a remake from hell).X-Men 2.  Holy crap!  Will this break the rule of "sequels are always worse than the first film"?  It certainly looks this way.I can't wait to see what Colossus looks like.League Of Extrordinary Gentlemen.  Bad trailer.  If I wasn't familiar with the comic, I'd have no idea what the movie was about.  Why not introduce the characters?  It's simple and would probably get the audience interested.And LXG?  Is this a blatent attempt to leech off the X-Man hype?The phone booth movie turned me off for some reason.  I couldn't put my finger on it until I saw that Schummacher directed it.  I swear I'm developing a 6th sense warning me of his films.Now, on to the film...One of the best superhero movies I've seen. Okay, that sounds like faint praise (I mean, how many good superhero movies are there?), but it isn't intended as such.  It's a pretty damn solid film as action movies go.You want proof of how good this film is?  Ben Affleck is good in it!  That's something I never thought I'd see.In fact, the entire cast was great!  Foggy was dead-on perfect, Garner was able to pull of drama as well as action, and Duncan handled the Kingpin well.  Everyone in every small part was excellent.I was also particularly gladdened to see David Keith (not to be confused with Keith David, the voice of Goliath in Gargoyles) as Matt's dad in the flashbacks.  Keith's an underrated actor, and a favorite of mine.What I find most amazing about this film is that it broke the tried and true movie rule;  the middle wasn't slow.  Stuff happened.  Interesting stuff.It's interesting to note that the DD/Elektra fight I'd seen a clip of (and hated) was very different from what was on the screen. The slow, romantic hip-hop music was out, it wasn't edited as chaotically, and the camera was pulled back enough to see what was going on.And, of course, the portrayal of the radar sense was imaginatively done.     Oh, and no "Supercalifragilistic" song from the trailers! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />On the down side:Affleck was good, but that's it.  I can think of a thousand other actors who would have been great in the part.  The movie fell into "movie logic" concerning Bullseye.  As an assassin, he's far from subtle.  He drives his motorcycle standing up?  He kills a man in a busy pub?  Kills a bodyguard?  If Kingpin wants a low profile, why hire this lunatic?Still not thrilled with the costumes.The courtroom scene.  If Murdock is a defense attorney, why is he prosecuting a rape case?  If it was a civil case, why was he found "not guilty" (they would find for the plaintiff or defendant).  And if Quesada was so poor that Kingpin was paying his lawyer bills, then how much were you planning on getting out of him in a lawsuit?And here's something that really bugged me.  Elektra gets her right hand pierced.  I was totally taken aback by this.  I didn't see it coming at all.  However, she not only can fight with it, but twirl her sai!  What?!  Her hand is pierced!  It only draws more attention to itself when the same thing happens to Bullseye and he screams about how his hands are ruined.It reminds me of bad wrestling.  "Ring psychology" is the term for a logical build up in the ring.  It's something a lot of modern wrestlers lack the ability to do.I'm no longer a wrestling fan (WWE is complete crap anymore, and TNA has Vince Russo, a moron, writing their shows), but it does remind me of something I saw a few years ago.Dean Malenko was wrestling Rikishi.  Malenko is very skilled and old school in performance (i.e., has ring psychology), while Rikishi isn't either.  During their match, Malenko worked over Rikishi's leg.  Over and over again, he locked on moves and kicked it.  Every attack focused on that leg.Since one of Rikishi's finishing moves is something he does while jumping off the ropes, you would expect that all that damage his leg took would come into play and he wouldn't be able to climb the ropes, let alone jump off them, causing him to lose to the cheating bad guy or force Rikishi to win by some other means.Nope.  Not only does he jump off, landing on that some leg to no ill effect, but, after the match, he stops limping and starts to dance around. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" />In both the cases of the wrestler and Elecktra, it diminishes what went before.  I also hope that the harder edge of the movie doesn't filter back into the comics.  When comics try to go "adult" they tend to fail miserably.  DD will end up turning into a drug addict who fights crime beause he's a masochist who gets off sexually from his abuse. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" />Still, all the negatives I mentioned didn't detract from my enjoyment of the overall film.  I'm definitely picking this up on dvd (hopefully, they won't pull an X-Men and release it on dvd followed by an even better one with more extras months later).</blockquote>

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