Day 49: I'm Everyone And No One

DARKMAN (1990)
Directed by Sam Raimi
Starring: Liam Neeson, Francis McDormand, Larry Drake, Colin Friels

Dr. Peyton Westlake (Neeson) is on the verge of creating a breakthrough in artificial skin grafts.  Unfortunately, his work is disrupted by local gangster Robert Durant (Drake) and crooked CEO Louis Strack (Friels).  Turns out Peyton's lawyer girlfriend Julie (McDormand) found out these two were in cahoots by way of a memo she uncovered.  When Durant and his cronies find the memo in Westlake's office, they dunk his face in a vat of chemicals, turn on some flammable gas and blow up the joint.  Now scarred beyond recognition, Westlake uses his synthetic skin to assume the identities of the men who tried to kill him while simultaneously tries to rekindle things with Julie.  The only problem is, the skin begins to decompose after 100 minutes of exposure.

Don't go into this movie expecting something deep or poignant. This is pure comic-book action.  Apparently, this film came as a result of Sam Raimi failing to secure the rights to do a movie version of both The Shadow and Batman.  So he decided to do his own vigilante anti-hero film, and it's actually not bad. 

However, the major problem with the film is the acting, which is hard to believe, considering the powerhouses that are Liam Neeson and Francis McDormand.  But they've got a couple things working against them.  First, as far as Neeson is concerned, he had to ditch is native Irish brogue for a more generic American accent, and he never quite pulls it off.  Second, the script (that had five credited writers) has a lot of lame dialogue and crazy one-liners that made my eyes roll.  I never like it when a writer makes his characters speak when it would be more effective for them to remain silent.  As a result, we have a pretty cliche-ridden script, which doesn't give the actors much to work with.

But it seems as if Raimi was aware of this, so he did what he does best: he went all out with the visuals.  Raimi is an extremely kinetic filmmaker, and there is never a dull visual moment in his films.  Cameras swoop, pan, zoom and tilt furiously, making an exciting scene even more so.  Many of his tactics, such as the strange montage of images superimposed over Neeson's face when he's about to snap, may seem over the top, and they are, but that's the point.  Here we have a director whose love of movie making shines.  He makes a habit of overshadowing the negatives (the weak script and stilted acting) with many positives (a definite visual flair).  He's having fun, and by showing us how much fun he's having, we as the audience end up having fun as well. 

Cineastes and those who look down their noses at films like Darkman will probably disagree with me on a lot of this, but so what?  This movie wasn't made for them, anyway.  If anything, it was made for Raimi himself.  One of the questions filmmakers constantly ask themselves (other than "Can I win any awards for this?") is "What kind of movie would I like to see?"  Filmmaking is much more fun and satisfying for the director if they're just making something that makes them happy.  And if that enthusiasm shows up on screen, it takes us along for the ride.  It may not be deep or meaningful, but it's certainly fun.