Director Report Card: Sam Raimi (1990)

4. Darkman

It was the late eighties and Sam Raimi wanted to make a superhero movie. He initially had his eyes set on “Batman” but Warner Brothers long-gestating big budget version of that hero was finally moving forward with Tim Burton. Next, Raimi tried to make a film version of “The Shadow” but he was refused the rights. Around the same time, he was even developing a “Thor” movie with Stan Lee, that also failed to find studio support. At that point, Raimi made the strategic move of deciding to just create his own damn superhero. Raimi wrote a treatment based off his own short story, which soon attracted the attention of Universal Studio. Working with a major studio for the first time, “Darkman” would prove a vital film in its director's career.

Dr. Peyton Westlake is working on a new type of hyper-realistic synthetic skin. However, the skin melts after an hour in direct sunlight, lasting slightly longer in the dark. His girlfriend, Julie, is an attorney investigating local land developer Louis Strack, who is making illegal deals with vicious gangster Robert Durant. Durant, believing Westlake is involved, destroys the doctor's lab and brutally attacks him. After blowing the building up, Westlake is left hideously burned, the nerves controlling his emotions removed to control the pain. Building a make-shift lab, he continues working on his synthetic skin with two goals in mind: Reuniting with Julie and taking his revenge on those that destroyed his life. To do so, he must become the Darkman.

The superhero movie really wasn't a genre in 1990. “Darkman” might have been Raimi's conscious attempt to create a superhero but the movie ends up being a far weirder and wilder combination of multiple pulp genres. Darkman is as much horror movie creation as he is costumed crime fighter, ostensibly a good guy that is brutally deformed and driven by truly out-of-control emotions. The film's villains, and many of its subplots, draw on classic gangster movies. The action sequences, meanwhile, feel inspired by Hong Kong heroic bloodshed action movies. The result is an electrifying blend that must've felt truly unexpected at the time of release.

What truly propels “Darkman” is its manic sense of energy, which naturally flows from the director's frenetic visual sense. Raimi does not relax his visual style any for his mainstream Hollywood debut. If anything, “Darkman” is even wackier looking than his earlier movies. This is most apparent in the insane montages. Whenever Darkman is driven into a rage, which isn't hard to do, the film explodes into a series of wild montages. This results in the screen breaking apart with flames, beakers or test tubes flying towards us. Or frenzied close-ups on Westlake's faces and eyes, his memories coming alive in a wild swirl of images. There's a trumpeting pink elephant at one point. It's a truly wild visual feast, that tickles the viewer's brain in fantastically unexpected ways.

As frenetic as Raimi's direction and editing remains, “Darkman” also represents the director getting his first chance at making a big budget action movie. The film features the kind of giant explosions and elaborate shoot-outs that were previously out of the director's budgetary ranges. The opening gun battle, involving a weaponized wooden leg, is especially energetic, lots of intercutting between the firing gun and the chaos it reaps. The big finale involves the hero dangling from a helicopter as he's swung through the city, also climaxing in a massive explosion, another inspired action beat. Basically, Sam doesn't let the bigger budget go to waste. He hits the expected elements of a studio action film while also throwing in insane shit, like a frenziedly cut sequence of a guy screaming in panic as he's held up in traffic.

If there's any place where “Darkman” fails as a superhero movie, it's in creating an easily explained origin for its hero. No matter how convoluted and contrived comic book history can get – and few things are more convoluted and contrived – the greatest superheroes can always have their origins boiled down to a single sentence. The film has to jump through a lot of hoops to justify Darkman's condition. He's a scientist working on radical new synthetic skin... Which comes in handy when his face is burned off and he has to seek vengeance on the gangsters who did it, allowing him to impersonates his enemies... But only in the dark, due to the touchiness of the new technology. A make-shift surgery also grants Darkman his unbridled emotions and adrenaline, further making his transformation into a superpowered crime fighter complete. That the movie gets away with all this bullshit, just to justify the hero's power set, is a real testament to how entertaining the overall product is.

You can tell, once he was working for Universal Studios, Sam Raimi the Horror Fan couldn't resist including some homages to the studios' classic monsters. Darkman is a monster of sorts. Aside from his graphically scarred visage, his out-of-control emotions makes him monstrous in a different way. He may look normal in his synthetic skin but his beastly side always comes out, surely as Jekyll becomes Hyde. He's especially sensitive about being called a “freak,” resulting in an epic – pun incoming – freak-out inside his lair. Which doubles as a Frankensteinian laboratory, full of bubbling tubes and sparking equipment. More than anything else, Raimi recalls tragic gothic tales like “Phantom of the Opera” or “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” with this story of an ugly outsider forced to pine for his love from the shadows, crudely covering his own hideousness.

That love story, ultimately, is not as compelling as it could've been. The movie sort of succeeds in what it's going for. Peyton and Julie have a special love. When he 'dies,” she's heart-broken. His return should be a great reunion for them both, but there's something wrong with him. Eventually, he gives her up to protect her. Frances McDormand is fine in the part, if a little underserved as a mere romantic interest. She and Liam Neeson have strong chemistry. Yet the romance isn't as poignant as it should be. That Peyton and Julie are still able to function as a romantic couple for a while, even after his transformation into Darkman, is a weakness, I think.

Truthfully, Darkman's ability to replicate the faces of his enemies, at least for a short time, ends up being a bit of an afterthought in the movie. He uses it to get the upper hand on his gangster enemies a few time. There's naturally, a scene where he is disguised as Durant only to come face-to-face with the real deal. It's used to maintain the Peyton Wesklake secret identity, which is doomed to failure. Yet the identity switching premise isn't as ingrained in the film's emotional DNA as its themes of otherness and failed romance are. The movie never comments on how Darkman would probably relish the ability to assume another identity, given what he's seen. His sudden transformation into a pitch perfect vocal mimic is never explained, the movie just rolling with it. It's ultimately nothing more than a story device and a (highly amusing) gimmick.

At the end of last decade, Liam Neeson would re-invent himself as an action star with “Taken” and other Dadsploitation flicks. Film fans with a longer memory would have already known that Neeson had long ago proved his ass-kicking credentials. Neeson is fantastically unhinged in the title role. Whenever Peyton has his temper tantrums, Neeson delights in shouting, leaping around, growling, swearing, and acting like a maniac. His extended dance sequence, where he elaborates on his new freakdom, is especially notable. Or when he screams in victory over a fallen foe. Honestly, there's a perverse thrill in watching “Darkman” in 2019, seeing that respected paragon of dignified masculinity Liam Neeson go so gloriously over-the-top. Similarly, Neeson has no trouble acting under the extensive make-up, his immediately recognizable voice going a long ways.

The best superhero is frequently only as good as his villain. While Darkman's adversary doesn't quite ranks as a supervillain per say, Larry Drake as Robert Durant is certainly a memorably twisted villain. Drake slithers with sinister intent as the gangster. His moods always vary between intimidating, angry, or egomanatical, Durant remaining in a villainous mode regardless of the time of day. He also gets an unforgettable gimmick, in his tendency to chop off his victim's fingers and keep them as trophy. Larry Drake is perfectly cast in the part. Those pointed predator eyes, sharp facial features, and harping voice are certainly well utilized.

In fact, Durant is such a memorable villain the audience easily misses that he's technically only the second-in-command. Colin Friels as corrupt businessman Louis Strack is the movie's actual mastermind and its final boss. Yet, compared to the helicopter chase and massive explosion that proceeds, Darkman tango-ing with some guy in a suit atop an unfinished skyscraper isn't quite as much fun. Don't get me wrong: It's a dynamic setting and one that's well utilized. Friels is perfectly sleazy, slimy, and smarmy as Friels. Yet “Darkman” undeniably peaks early and never quite recovers.

Featuring an extremely on-point Danny Elfman score – the main theme is almost identical to the “Batman” theme – “Darkman” shows Raimi as very adapt at handling a comic book-like tone, freely mixing genres to create a wild and hugely entertaining ride. Raimi had some struggles with the studio, facing repeated rewrites and some issues during editing. However, it all worked out okay. A catchy marketing campaign, asking the public “Who is Darkman?,” pulled in audiences and made the film a hit. Taking us out with a perfectly placed Bruce Campbell cameo, “Darkman” is sure to leave any sensible genre fan with a big smile on his face. [Grade: A-]