DARKMAN (1990)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

I had wondered if Sam Raimi's DARKMAN, with its over-the-top rendition of a face-shifting superhero, had received any inspiration from the Batman film-franchise. This may never be fully known, for though Raimi presented his "Darkman" script (in the form of a short story) to Universal Pictures roughly a year before the 1989 movie went into pre-production, the Batman property had been been cycling through development hell since 1983. Raimi has said that he'd wanted to do a "Shadow" film but he couldn't secure the rights. So it's possible that, being a comics fan, he thought he had as good a chance as anyone with the genre, given how poorly Hollywood had treated superhero-adjacent franchises from 1984 until 1989.

Had Raimi done a Shadow film, it seems likely that he would emphasizes the crusader's facility with disguises, given how large a part this stratagem plays in DARKMAN. Once he was no longer modeling his character on the pulp-hero, Raimi took further inspiration from the concept of the Phantom of the Opera. Unlike most of the movie versions, the Phantom from Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel is like the later Shadow a disguise-master. Given the character's disfigurement. he necessarily has to be able to don disguises just to interact with regular people in order to obtain the items he needs for his lair beneath the opera house. Whether Raimi read the source novel or not, he definitely crossbred the idea of a scarred "monster" with that of a crusader fighting crime with the help of disguises, though Darkman is only concerned with the crooks who caused his disfigurement. Since Darkman comes into being when ruthless gangsters blow up the laboratory of researcher Peyton Westlake, there might also be some inspiration from DC's Swamp Thing, who first appeared in comics in 1971 and in a live-action film in 1982.

So much for all of the inspirations for Darkman. But is his initial movie, the only outing to get a theatrical release, good in itself?

When I saw DARKMAN back in the day, I appreciated its hell-bent-for-leather style, but I didn't think Raimi made any his characters-- scientist Westlake (Liam Neeson), his girlfriend Julie (Frances McDormand), or Darkman's nemesis Robert Durant (Larry Drake)-- particularly interesting. It's certainly an impressive coincidence that Westlake happens to be researching new ways of creating artificial skin for grafting operations, and after being burned horribly by the gangsters, this is just the thing he needs to generate the disguises the hero needs to gain vengeance. But Raimi doesn't really come up with a rationale for the scientist's sudden ascension to the role of action-hero. After the burned scientist is admitted into a hospital, a doctor tells her subordinates about how the unidentified burn victims had had all of his nerve endings damaged, so that he can't feel pain. Okay, but that doesn't account for his apparent increases in strength (late in the film Westlake seizes a grown man and flings him like a toy) and in athleticism. In addition, Darkman is sometimes more monster than hero, being fully willing to torture one of Durant's thugs for information. 

While girlfriend Julie believes Westlake dead, smarmy land developer Louis Strack puts the moves on her. The viewer never sees Darkman tempted to murder the businessman, though in due time it's revealed that Strack is the man who hired Durant to do his dirty work, so Strack becomes part of the hero's campaign for vengeance. Though Raimi's script constantly sells Durant-- the enforcer who dominates the film-- as a ruthless criminal who projects the appearance of urbane wit, I found Drake unimpressive as a formidable villain.

The aborted romance of Neeson and McDormand provides the film's only dramatic element, and the actors carry these scenes off with creditable panache. But both the romantic and the adventure elements are fairly predictable, and since I never found the rationale of Darkman resonant, I for one was not looking forward to any revivals of the character, even in DTV movies.