Darkman | | Cast : | Liam Neeson, Frances McDormand | | Director : | Sam Raimi | | Studio : | Universal Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | August 24, 1990 | | DVD Released Date : | April 01, 2003 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), Spanish (Subtitled), Spanish (Dubbed), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 30, 2005 | | Summary | Face----Off! | Content
 | Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson)has it all: he's a research scientist pioneering cutting edge treatments in skin graft technology, using his well-stocked science lab and dedicated science interns to develop synthetic skin.
But wouldn't you know it, Peyton also has woman problems. Not that ambitious lawyer Julie (Frances McDormand) doesn't adore him: quite the contrary. But Julie is sniffing out corruption at City Hall, and makes the disastrous mistake of leaving documents---the Bellisarius Memorandum!---implicating powerful local land developer Louis Strack Jr. (Colin Friels) in Peyton's lab.
Henchman and sadist Robert G. Durant (Larry Drake) shows up, and shuts down Peyton, his lab, his eager interns, and his science project---with extreme prejudice, enlisting a little torture, dismemberment, mutilation, and general havoc and brutality (as well as the ever useful Evil Villain Exploding Laboratory technique) to provide Dr. Peyton Westlake with a generous---if sudden---early retirement package.
But the explosion that obliterates Westlake's lab and covers up the cigar-chomping Durant's dirty deeds also catapults the unlucky scientist into the harbor, sparing his life. There *is* a downside: He's burned, he's folded, he's spindled and mutilated and doesn't have much of a face---indeed, what's left looks sorta like what happens when you stretch a particularly hot, stringy, cheesy pepperoni pizza---but being a (now mad)scientist, he's got an ace up his labcoat.
He has the Synethetic Skin, and a Score to settle: so he uses the Skin as a ready-made disguise, a kind of Face-Club-for-Men, providing him with all sorts of convenient methods by which he can infiltrate the Enemy and destroy him. Problem is, the Synethetic Skin isn't quite ready for prime time (or even, say, Joan Rivers's face): it's highly unstable and degrades into a useless blob (hi, Pizzaface!) in 99 minutes. Plus maybe a little longer when it's Dark.
Consequently, Peyton Westlake becomes the incredible melting Darkman, and we get treated to what would, in retrospect, be a midpoint for director Sam Raimi's career. He hadn't quite left the sick indie glory world of "Evil Dead", and he hadn't quite entered the Hollywood mega-blockbuster zone of "Spider-Man". Result: gore, goop, and a happily demented anti-superhero origin story.
I love Spider-Man; particularly the second installment, in which Sam Raimi nailed the reality of the superhero's lonely life. But for all the flamboyant glory of his Spidey series, it's not gory, it's not sick, it's not deviant, it's not damn-the-torpedoes disgusting---it's not really meant to be.
By contrast, "Darkman" is the all-American superhero by way of "Evil Dead", the slum-dweller equivalent of "Spider-man", sorta like Spidey's trailer-dwelling cousin who lives across town near the chemical plant. Raimi is at his warped best here, and Darkman reveals its steel knuckles and packs a wallop on your overloaded cranium: at its heart, Darkman is a brutal, nasty, wickedly stealthy revenge flick.
Raimi keeps it moving blackly along, Cinematographer Bill Pope (who later did the camera-work for The Matrix trilogy) ensures that everything looks twistedly gorgeous along the way, and composer Danny Elfman makes sure the sountrack has the warp and woof and bump and grind the flick requires.
Everybody delivers on the acting, particularly Liam Neeson, bringing class and conviction to what would later become a breakout role, and expressing himself beneath all those bandages, meat, gore, blood and goop. Particularly good is the talented Larry Drake playing Durant, one of the greatest, down-to-business, no-bullsh*t-or-I'll-slaughter-ya criminal masterminds in cinematic history. Here is a guy who wastes no time, takes no prisoners; Durant wouldn't be caught dead leaving the hero alone, out of sight, with an inattentive guard. He'd just shoot him on the spot.
And Raimi uses Durant to make it absolutely clear what kind of flick Darkman is going to be from the start: Sam primes the pump, sets the stage in a charming little scene that, for my money, is one of the best ever. Before even the opening credits, Durant's gang has just annihilated a rival gang, which tried to ambush them in a warehouse under the pretense of talking over a 'deal'. A prisoner---a survivor, really, the only rival gangster not riddled with bullets from Durant's thugs---is hauled before Drake, who brandishes a cigar cutter, which he proceeds to slide over the man's index finger.
"Point One: I try not to let me anger get the better of me", he says, as he slices off the man's finger, the fingerbone making a jolly crisp snapping sound as counterpoint to Durant. "Point Two: I don't always succeed", he says, fitting and slicing another finger.
"And Point Three: I've got Seven more Points" he says, snipping the blade home a third time. Cue screams and opening titles---I mean, come on, how can you *not* like a flick---and a thug---like that? When I grow up, I wanna be Robert G. Durant.
Punisher take notes: this is how you serve up a tasty dish of Revenge. Lock, load, and set your watch for 99 minutes: nobody settles a score like Pizzaface---er, I mean Darkman.
JSG |
| Rating | | | Date | July 12, 2005 | | Summary | banality by any other name | Content
| Jeez, maybe I am getting old, but I really found absolutely nothing about this film to be interesting or original in the slightest.
A brilliant scientist. Disfigured. Angry. Finds temporary techie fix for face. Goes to get bad guys. Fighting. More fighting. Still more fighting. Ex mate learns he's alive. He leaves her anyway (he's too ugly). The end. More to come, if successful. Not recommended. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 30, 2005 | | Summary | Mixed Bag Worth a Rental | Content
| Rent but don't buy this mixed bag of a flick. Revenge fantasy/superhero/romance/character study/phantom of the opera/action. All this and a sadistic James Bond villian. My filmgoing cup runneth over. Add poorly handled rear- projectioning in the last 30 minutes & the result is more of a bunch of different food hastily stirred together than any sort of a stew. Liam Neeson, Frances McDormand, Larry Drake & excellent makeup FX keep this leaky vessel afloat. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 19, 2005 | | Summary | Lost in the crowd! | Content
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Witty script concerning with a scientist who, through the holography reproduces cloned organs. He is fiercely attacked and supposed dead; since he gets survive and seeks his revenge, behind the shadows as Darkman. Neeson and Mc Dormand are perfect in this underground picture where the love still lives, but the blame wins the combat.
Scrupulously detailed this is obviously a Noir Film, conceived as a heartfelt homage to The Beauty and the beast and with some bits of The Opera's Phantom. The awful nightmare in which Preston Westlake lives is unbearable for any human being who briefly assumes his far from enviable situation. Has it any sense to rebuild your life behind the scare that once was a face? .
Since its release in 1990 it has his cult followers.
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| Rating | | | Date | March 07, 2005 | | Summary | One of the better superhero movies, but not one of the best | Content
| Before the Spider-Man franchise, Sam Raimi helmed another comic book superhero film: Darkman. It is the story of many superheroes: a freak accident leaves a man as a societal outcast, struggling to come to grips with this freak that he has become. The first two-thirds of Darkman are superb, but the end of the movie betrays what came before it.
Liam Neeson stars as Dr. Peyton Westlake, a scientist who is working on developing a sort of artificial skin, but the only time the skin can last longer than 99 minutes without combusting is when it's in the dark. When Peyton's girlfriend Julie (Frances McDormand) stumbles upon a memorandum that proves a wealthy land developer named Strack (Colin Friels) has been making underhanded payoffs, a kingpin named Robert G. Durant (Larry Drake) and his men bust into Peyton's lab, killing his assistant and leaving Peyton brutally maimed, with only about one-fourth of his face remaining.
Julie believes that Peyton is dead when all they could find of him was an ear, but meanwhile Peyton has set up shop in an abandoned warehouse, continuing to work on his invention. He doesn't want anyone, most especially Julie, to see him in his disfigured state, and he begins using his artificial skins as disguises to go after Durant and his men and extract his revenge.
When Darkman is concentrating on Peyton's feeling as he struggle to deal with being disfigured, it is very effective. Where it falls apart for me is when Peyton magically turns into an action hero; it's hard to believe that this scientist, who was badly burned and left with no superpowers except the ability to withstand pain, is able to suddenly fight like a regular martial artist. I understand that this is a superhero movie, and that's what's supposed to happen, but in the best movies of this genre (see: Spider-Man and Hulk), there is sufficient reasoning provided. But this is probably nitpicking, and Darkman can still be considered one of the better (though not one of the best) comic book superhero films. |
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