What’s nice about Netflix is that they shoot the entire 13-episode season first before releasing them to prospective viewers. You can then have a marathon viewing the entire season and no longer need to wait for a new episode every week like what other networks do with their serials.
We’ve just seen “Daredevil”, first filmed on the big screen starring Ben Affleck and was a big flop. The TV version is definitely much more engaging to watch. First of all, the lead actor, Charlie Cox, is just perfect as Matt Murdock, the blind lawyer who becomes the masked vigilante called Daredevil at night.
Cox, a British actor we first saw as Jose Ma. Escriva in “There Be Dragons” and as the friend of Stephen Hawking and his wife in “The Theory of Everything”, will also be good as the next James Bond, if he weren’t identified first as Daredevil.
The first season of “Daredevil” is an origin story set in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen showing Matt as a boy who got blind from radioactive material after an accident where he tried to save a man. He may have lost his sight but his other senses get heightened and enhanced.
We see him being trained by another blind man (Scott Glenn) then later starting his law practice as the series starts, with his friend Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson). Their first case involves a secretary for a construction company, Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), who’s accused of murdering her date.
The story’s main villain is Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), who killed his own abusive dad as a boy. He has become a crime lord who works with Russian, Chinese and Japanese syndicates and has pretensions that he is actually out to save the city. Both Cox and D’Onofrio are standouts in their respective well defined roles.
The astonishing action scenes are so well choreographed and staged, but they’re quite lengthy and Cox gets a brutal beating all the time. There are some “daldalan” portions involving philosophical and religious musings that TV viewers might find boring, but over all, it’s a satisfying different kind of superhero series that you’d want to see through the end. “Daredevil” is easily the darkest thing we’ve seen in MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) and Daredevil is its darkest hero and also the one who gets beaten up the most. Next show that we’ll review: “Jessica Jones”.
