Darkman

Unable to secure the rights to The Shadow or Batman, director Sam Raimi combined the two into a film that sparks of those inspirations along with Phantom of the Opera, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the yet to be made Face/Off.  Coming off of the first two Evil Dead movies, it is difficult to tell whether Raimi was bringing his cheesy graphic horror sensibilities to play with a grittier character driven super hero tale or vice versa.  Either way, the result has become a cult classic, as has pretty much everything else he's done.

Liam Neeson plays Peyton, a scientist working on a revolutionary artificial skin.  When his girlfriend (Frances McDormand) stumbles across a memo she shouldn't have seen, Payton finds himself caught in the middle as the Mobster mobster Durant (Larry Drake) and his goons come looking for it.  Peyton is apparently killed in the explosion that the mobsters inflict on his lab, but miraculously survives.  Disfigured inside and out, Peyton uses his technology to exact revenge and win back the girl as the vigilante Darkman.  Colin Friels also stars and longtime Raimi friend Bruce Campbell cameos.  Darkman also features one of Danny Elfman's earlier scores.

This film certainly shows its age.  Green screen scenes are laughable and the CG is rudimentary.  The special effects overall are a combination of coming from 1990 and Sam Raimi's stylistic approach, featuring lots of double exposures, crazy flashbacks, mirrored camera work and explosions.  The character of Darkman is interesting, though Neeson portrays him in some sort of overacted style that is half appropriate and half jarring.  In many ways this is not what you would call a good movie.  The plot is ridiculous, the acting cheesy along with the special effects, and the cinematography is outdated, even for the 90's.  There is something oddly compelling about the characters and story though.

The characters all take themselves much more seriously than we do, which is, I think, something of a trademark of Raimi's.  He's come a long way since Darkman, as evidenced by the more recent Spider Man films.  Though he still likes to include Bruce Campbell.

*** (3/5 stars)