Dr. Peyton Westlake is on the verge of realizing a major breakthrough in synthetic skin when his laboratory is destroyed by gangsters. Having been burned beyond recognition and forever altered by an experimental medical procedure, Westlake becomes known as Darkman, assuming alternate identities in his quest for revenge and a new life with a former love.
Enter Darkman. Sam Raimi’s trial run for the Spider-Man franchise is a whole bunch of fun. Liam Neeson plays Dr. Peyton Westlake, a super scientist who after a major run-in with the villainous Robert G. Durant (Larry Drake), reinvents himself as Darkman, a super-anti-hero who sets about ridding L.A. of its mobsters. It’s a comic book film that isn’t based on a comic book, Raimi inventing his own tortured protagonist whilst homaging similar beings of eras past. All the silliness of such fare is here of course, overblown violence and colourful characters are frequent, but there’s good thought gone into the revenge theme, while the action sequences are often excellent. The pace hardly sags, as Raimi’s creations move about a Los Angeles that is equally decaying or affluent, and in Neeson the story has a lead actor with swagger, pathos and emotional force in abundance. 7/10
This is interesting... this is one of those B-Movie gems that is packed full of pro-talent before they really became pro-talent. And that is right down to the Cohens who did uncredited script polishing. This is worth the watch, even if you are one of those people that hates B-movies... wrongly hates. And, its a comic book movie, it is over the top, it is campy, it packs serious action into a short little plot that still manages to be compelling. The MCU could take lessons on story crafting from this.
Seen this one a few times over the years and while some scenes were really cheesy due to the visual effects of that era, it still is quite entertaining and solid performances from Neeson and McDormand even with some of the overly dramatic dialogue especially from Neeson. Fine way to spend 90-minutes still.
