In 2003, Marvel wasn’t a Universe and movie special effects weren’t scarily surreal. Those are two reasons “Daredevil” misses the mark, but they’re more like excuses. Nobody had to make the writing so ham-fisted and nobody had to make Ben Affleck a ridiculously computer-aided cross between Batman and Spiderman. Jennifer Garner’s Elektra is reduced to sugarless eye candy and Colin Farrell’s Bullseye comes off as some kind of crazy Irish Andre Agassi. And the courtroom scenes (Affleck’s a lawyer by day) are as preposterous as the special effects. Hopefully, he didn’t represent himself when he divorced Garner in real life.
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Matthew Modine wrote a screenplay for a movie. That he directed. And starred in. What could go wrong? The road to straight-to-DVD hell is paved with films like “If… Dog… Rabbit” (2002). I’m sure the intentions were good. Just like Modine’s character, the cliché son from a white-trash family who is back from prison, vowing to stay clean. And just like the carefully planned caper that Modine gets sucked into because, well, because that’s how these movies go. It would be a harmless B-movie, except it (meaning Modine) doesn’t realize it isn’t any better than that. Just like Modine’s character.
Hey, Frank Sinatra made World War II movies – why not Jon Bon Jovi? The younger New Jersey pop star plays a supporting role in “U-571” (2000), in which a group of American submarine sailors carry out a secret mission against the Germans. The Yanks – and the movie, for that matter – are led by untested skipper Matthew McConaughey. Not to worry, because Harvey Keitel, David Keith and Bill Paxton are there to lend ballast to the neophyte leading man. The film is boilerplate war movie stuff – ragtag bunch faces adversity, yada, yada – and (spoiler alert) we all know how WWII ends.
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