Back in 1990 before writer/director Sam Raimi
brought to the screen one of the best superhero movies of all time (Spider-man
2) then followed it with one of the worst (Spider-man 3) he created a hero of
his own, his name? “Darkman”.
The film
showed us Liam Neeson in one of his early starring roles as Dr. Peyton Westlake
a scientist on the verge of creating synthetic skin. Before succeeding in the
skin-grafting process he is interrupted by a gang of thugs looking to silence
his girlfriend played by Frances McDormand who stumbles across a shady
development deal, not finding her, they blow-up Dr. Westlake’s lab as well as
him, but miraculously he survives though with burns over 90 % of his body. He also has nerve damage that allows him to
feel no pain and pushes his adrenaline up to almost superhuman strength. He escapes the hospital to take revenge on
the gangsters that took his life away.
While continuing his experiments he decides to use his synthetic skin to
impersonate the criminals he’s after and ruin their lives. The head of the gang is played by Larry Drake
as Robert G. Durant, a name that’s used as a pretty effective joke in the film.
Darkman is
an awesome 90’s film, it’s filled with the style and semi-wacky humor that
makes Raimi’s films fun to watch. It has
the B-horror elements as well as the hero elements throughout the movie, and
with the score by Danny Elfman it sounds like a dark, eerie, crazy superhero
film. Neeson plays the character completely
straight even as he’s going from a little crazy to a lot crazy. The action is pretty amazing as is the last
few final set pieces where Darkman squares off against the villains of the film. Even though it spawned two really boring
sequels the last of which does have one of the funniest sequel titles since “Breakin’
2: Electric Boogaloo” in the third film of the series titled “Darkman III”:
Die, Darkman, Die”, Darkman is a great superhero film for its time, and
deserves to be remembered as such.
--Robert L.
Castillo
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