DARKMAN. Directed by Sam Raimi; written by Sam Raimi and produced by Robert Tapert for Univereal. Starring Liam Neeson, Frances McDormand and Larry Drake. Rated R.
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The Incredible Hulk, Robocop, The Fly, Batman. Darkman is a goulash of ingredients from all of these quasi-mythical movies, and some others as well. Like most such mixtures, it's a little hard to swallow occasionally. But its main problems come from logical implausibilities and less than perfect casting, rather than from tasting too many different flavors.
Westlake (Neeson), a scientist working on the development of artificial skin, is the victim of a group of sadistic thugs who think they've killed him. Of course, they haven't, but he finds his research coming in quite handy since he's horribly disfigured from their attack. Also handy are adrenaline "surges" which give him superhuman strength, usually when he's angry about something.
Neeson is no casting problem. He's a good physical actor and he can get a lot of mileage out of tormented lunges around the lab. Plus he's believable and sympathetic when he's got his face on, too.
I'm a real fan of McDormand, but I think she's miscast here. She's at her best in realistic or hyper-realistic dramas (like Mississippi Burning or Blood Simple). The kind of interest she generates for her characters just doesn't connect well with science fiction, at least not the flimsy kind in evidence here.
An even more serious problem, one involving narrative development as well as casting, concerns the villains of the piece. Drake, as Durant, the head thug, is simply chilling. (It will be hard to watch him as the sweet office boy, Bennie, on "L.A. Law" after seeing him as this coolly sadistic killer.)
Unfortunately for Darkman though, Drake is too good, since it turns out that he's not really supposed to be the head bad guy. By the time the plot makes this point, though, we've been so scared by Durant that nobody could scare us more. This is just sloppy writing, and robs the final scenes of much of their potential power.
Darkman is a stylish thriller, to be sure, with a good dose of black humor, too. But there's not enough style or humor to outweigh its scenes of brutally sadistic violence, certainly not for squeamish moviegoers. And perhaps not for the rest of the audience as well.
September 19, 1990