Daredevil (Director’s Cut)
Year: 2003
Rating: R
Length: 134 minutes / 2.23 hours

Back in the early days of the rising popularity of the superhero movie, long before cinematic universes and multi-film crossovers, there were a handful of films that brought these comic book characters to the big screen. From Spider-Man (2002) to X-Men (2000) to The Punisher (2004), one of these films was none other than Daredevil (2003). For many years, I had seen these films, even going so far as having seen Hulk (2003). The one I had not seen was Daredevil, mostly because I had heard it was so bad. I had seen Hulk, so I knew how bad they could be.

Now that a Director’s Cut of Daredevil was available, I heard it improved on the original and decided to just skip the original cut entirely. With no understanding of what the film used to be, I can say that the Director’s Cut isn’t completely terrible. Sure, some of the lines are goofy, and the actors chosen for the roles might not have been the best choices, but it’s a solid film. I did find it interesting how many actors who have had better success with directing were present in this film. From Ben Affleck (The Town (2010) and Argo (2012)) to Jon Favreau (Iron Man (2008) and The Jungle Book (2016)), and even a cameo appearance by Kevin Smith (Clerks (1994) and Chasing Amy (1997)), these actors definitely work better behind the camera.

Even with the Director’s Cut being a supposed improvement on the film, there still seemed to be too many sub-plots all running at once, each one of which I felt didn’t get nearly enough screen time to fully explore what was happening. Another problem with this film is that it has not aged well. From the soundtrack being clearly inspired by the music of the time, to the CGI showing the limitations of the computers at the time, all these things just scream “2003” to me.

Probably not as bad as it could have been, I give Daredevil (Director’s Cut) 3.0 stars out of 5.