Daredevil Is Now On Netflix. Time to Binge Watch!

I am reviewing the TV Show, so for those of you who want the TV Show to be exactly like the comic book, then perhaps this might not be a review that you like. I’d like to invite you to erase any memory of Ben Affleck as Daredevil in 2003. It’s hard, I know. But it has to be done. Which (on a quick side-note) doesn’t give me a good feeling about Affleck being Batman either. You just know it’s gonna suck. Anyway, back here again.

Erased? Good, let’s begin.

First up, whoa. After watching the trailer for Daredevil (check it out below) I knew that it was going to be a lot darker than anything else that Marvel has produced. Other comic to TV shows like Arrow (from Green Arrow) tried the whole, dark broody vigilante angle but just didn’t quite cut it. However Daredevil…

Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) is dark (perhaps not as dark as the comic book) but also human. And also insanely sexy, so much so that the show manages to make violence kinda sexy. Cox is the perfect guy to play both Murdock and his alter ego Daredevil. He blends the two seamlessly and you believe him when he says he’s hurting the fake detective/Russian guy not only because of the boy but also because “I’m doing this ‘cause I enjoy it.” Hell, even I wanna be Daredevil at this rate, and I’m not big on violence. Daredevil’s badassery seems to have no match.

I’m assuming that Netflix has taken into account that we will binge watch the entire series because they’re not in any hurry to move things along. In fact the whole first season plays like a very, very long movie. The pace is slow but at the same time impactful, and I’m not just talking about the fight scenes, which are pretty damn ballsy. You don’t even see Fisk until a few episodes in. And throughout the episodes you get flashbacks of Murdock’s past that helps build on his present. It’s a pace that is clearly unrushed, unlike many other shows where they want to reveal early on where the hero gets his powers.

It’s not the norm, but I like it.

So, the basics for those of you who’ve never read the comic… Matt Murdock is a blind, young lawyer who just out of law school decides to open his own practice with his partner Foggy Nelson (Elder Henson) so they can defend the ‘good people’ of Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan. However because of his blindness by radioactive substances, his other senses are heightened beyond human capabilities, the most noticeable being that he can hear human heartbeats and determine if they’re lying. Which of course means by night Murdock becomes a masked vigilante looking for justice – on his own terms. His adversaries include the elusive Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), who when he finally emerges is seductively both vulnerable and vicious; a laughing Chinese woman, two hot headed Russians and your typical broody Japanese man. Oh and a loudmouth American.

Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page and Rosario Dawson as Claire Temple are amazing in their roles. Actually I wish Claire Temple was on the show a lot more. She’s spunky and the heat between the Murdock and her are palpable. It’s a ‘will-they/won’t they’ situation and well… SPOILER: when they finally do kiss it’s almost a relief. END SPOILER. Woll is very adept at playing the ‘lost, yearning’ girl, even from True Blood, so it comes as no surprise that she reprises that role here too.

Either way, the whole cast just works very well together. I haven’t seen beyond the fifth episode but I am expecting good things to come. You better get your Netflix on and clear your day so you can hunker down and binge watch Marvel’s Daredevil – like a normal human!

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