“The Russian Arc”

Welcome everyone to “The Good, the Bad, and the Pedantic”, a review series where I take a look at the most recent comic book and general geek interest adaptations and see how they translate to the screen. As the title of this series states I will see what works in an adaptation as well as what needs to be improved. After I’ve gone through the parts both good and bad about the series itself I’ll take a look at the subtle nods, mythology foreshadowing, and overt changes to canon that fans tend to obsess over.

In this installment I’ll be tackling Marvel’s Daredevil. As this is a thirteen part episode premiering all at once on Netflix I will be taking it in three parts for ease to myself and readers instead of in episodic chunks. I call this first arc “The Russian Arc” due to the separate escalating wars between Matt Murdock, Wilson Fisk, and the titular mafia.

*Spoiler Warning for those who haven’t seen the first six episodes of Daredevil.

Recap

Our first episode “Into the Ring” begins with Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) establishing the mystery of the Daredevil in Hell’s Kitchen. Wearing a makeshift costume with a face-concealing bandana that betrays his blindness[1] Daredevil starts the series by taking down a sex trafficking ring run by Turk Barrett (Rob Morgan) who will serve as a smug and bumbling enforcer in the larger organization of the Kingpin. While Daredevil finds his footing Matt and his best friend Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) establish their law firm and take on murder-suspect Karen Page (Deborah Ann-Woll) as their first client. After a failed assassination exonerates Karen she becomes the law secretary at Nelson and Murdock. Information found during the attack on Karen’s life leads Daredevil on a collision course against the mysterious Kingpin and his sprawling Hell’s Kitchen empire[2].

In episode two “Cut Man” the Kingpin’s right-hand-man Wesley (Toby Leonard Moore) senses the danger that Daredevil[3] poses and instructs the Russian mafia to kidnap a child and draw the vigilante out. After getting beaten senseless and landing in a dumpster Matt is found by Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), a nurse who heals his injuries and becomes the first keeper of Matt’s secret identity as Daredevil. While Daredevil cuts a path through the Russian mafia the story of how Battlin’ Jack Murdock (John Patrick Hayden) sacrificed everything to prove to his son that he can win a fight against all odds is shown in flashback. Jack winning a fight when he was paid to take a dive serves as the catalyst for his son’s self-destructive lifestyle that is made far more inspirational than it should be due to his determinism.

After a thrilling battle in a hallway to save the missing boy[4] Matt’s world gets far more brutal in the third episode “Rabbit in a Snowstorm”. Matt meets Wesley for the first time when the latter hires Nelson and Murdock to represent an assassin claiming self-defense for killing a man at a bowling alley. While the audience, and Matt through his super senses, knows that Healy was clearly the instigator at the bowling alley he takes up the case in order to get closer to the mysterious employer who has left everyone in Hell’s Kitchen terrified. This is an episode for introductions as Karen enlists the help of New York Bulletin[5] reporter Ben Urich (Vondie Curtis-Hall) in investigating her employers who put the initial hit out on her. The most important of introductions comes from our series’ antagonist Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onfrio). We are first introduced to his name through Healy, who immediately kills himself after divulging said information to Daredevil. Wilson Fisk appears in the flesh moments after the reveal of his name admiring the titular “Rabbit in a Snowstorm” painting that will become extremely critical in coming episodes. We are also introduced to the object of Wilson’s attraction Vanessa Marianna (Ayelet Zurer) who will guide how he does business during the coming war against Daredevil.

Episode four “In the Blood” raises the stakes on the Russian Arc while also giving viewers a sense as to who Wilson Fisk really is underneath it all. The majority of Matt’s actions in this episode deal with having to save Claire, who has been captured by the Russians in order to gain knowledge of Daredevil’s true identity. Claire’s capture shows the danger of knowing Matt’s secret but also highlights his reliability as he rescues her from the Russians, causing them to fear the Daredevil even more. This fear causes one of the leaders of the Russians, Anatoly (Gideon Emery) to intrude on a date between Fisk and Vanessa. The interruption washes away Fisk’s awkward romances to reveal the anger swelling underneath. After taking Vanessa home Fisk arranges a meeting where he beats Anatoly senseless before bashing his head in with a car door so many times that it dislodges from his body. Wilson welcomes the gang war that will ensue because of his actions with Daredevil getting caught in the middle.

And caught in the middle is exactly where he finds himself in episode five “World on Fire”. While Daredevil hunts for the Russians he remains unaware that Fisk has framed him for Anatoly’s murder and sent him on a path where both sides can take each other out. This escalation between Daredevil and the Russians allows Fisk to prepare for a new organization without the two. As he explains his murder of Anatoly to fellow crime lords Madame Gao (Wai Ching Ho), Nobu (Peter Shinkoda), and Leland Owlsley (Bob Gunton) Fisk makes his first overt play as the Kingpin in Hell’s Kitchen. All three of these individuals will become much more important in the coming arcs but their acquiescence to Fisk’s requests in this episode marks the danger that he poses for Daredevil. This danger is seen tenfold when Daredevil arrives at the Russian headquarters where they are gearing up for a full-scale war. This confrontation is stalled when Fisk blows up Russian headquarters across the city and further cements his relationship with Vanessa who understands his motivations for tearing Hell’s Kitchen to the ground. Matt ends the episode with Anatoly’s brother Vladimir (Nikolai Nikolaeff) in toe but has the NYPD training guns on him.

In the final part of the Russian Arc “Condemned” Daredevil finds himself on the run from the police with Vladimir as his hostage. After saving his life with surgical assistance from Claire, Matt tries to get information out of the Russian mobster about Fisk’s enterprise. Taking Daredevil’s presence as an opportunity Fisk pins the bombings on him and sends his bought and paid for police officers after the man in black. As a Fisk-controlled sniper begins taking out police[6] Matt finds himself pinned to the ground. The desperation of Matt’s situation is highlighted when he and Fisk speak for the first time over a radio. Fisk is assured that Daredevil poses no threat to his organization while Matt looks for weaknesses in the immovable object that is Wilson Fisk. Matt eventually does get information out of Vladimir in the form of Leland Owlsley being the moneyman behind the Hell’s Kitchen gangs. As Vladimir guns down the corrupt police officers to give Daredevil a chance to escape the last of the Russian mafia dies while Matt has a lead on taking down the rest of the Kingpin’s organization.

The Good

Like most comic book adaptations Daredevil lives and dies by the performance of its actors. While the work by Elden Henson, Deborah Ann-Woll, Rosario Dawson, and Vondie Curtis-Hall are each enjoyable and natural Daredevil truly thrives when its two most important characters are on screen. Charlie Cox shines in making Matt Murdock a charming lead plagued with the hypocrisy of being a man of both the law and God and a vigilante who beats criminals senseless at night. Vincent D’Onfrio’s Wilson Fisk will clearly be the show’s most divisive figure due to the liberties taken in the crime lord’s character, but I will hold off on talking about him in the next installment where his character comes more front-and-center.

Much has been said for Daredevil’s action scenes, and it is well-deserved heat. While the first episode builds up Daredevil as a brutal fighter much better than adaptions such as Batman Begins and Arrow did it isn’t until his second episode where we get possibly the best comic book fight scene ever filmed. The hallway fight between Daredevil and the Russian mob is a masterwork in creating a character that’s miles ahead of everyone else in terms of combat ability but still a human being who struggles to stay alive when it’s a one-on-twelve fight. Another fight that shows Daredevil as a terror for the enemies he fights is episode five’s fight between Matt and Russian gangsters seen from the point-of-view of a taxicab. It’s no coincidence that both of these scenes are one-take exercises that exhaust the viewer much like Matt gets in his fights. Daredevil avoids a shaky-cam style that has plagued action films and television in recent years, instead focusing its camera on the performers and allowing the audience to absorb the impact of a fight.

Something that Daredevil excels at that puts it on the same level as other prestige dramas such as Breaking Bad and True Detective is its ability to create an atmosphere. From the very first scenes we get a sense of what Hell’s Kitchen is like from the street-level up. Darkness is an asset on a show like Daredevil in that it floods its fight scenes and interrogations in shadow with flashes of light flickering in much like they do when Matt’s super senses paint an impressionistic painting of the world for him. Before we even see Wilson Fisk at the beginning of “Rabbit in a Snowstorm” we can tell this has been a world built by its antagonist. For the first time there is dirt under the Marvel Universe’s fingernails and it gives Daredevil the grit that it needs to stand out from the rest of the crowd.

The Bad

Daredevil shows that Marvel is poised to take over television much like it has the cinemas in recent years. Obviously it was a boon for Daredevil to premiere on Netflix, whose laxer standards allow them to delve into the dark world of Hell’s Kitchen, but it’s obvious the creators struggle at times to decide when it is appropriate to darken the world and when to keep it in line with the lightness of the rest of its universe. In the first six episodes alone we have a man snapping bones and smashing heads in with a bowling ball before impaling his own head on a spike, Anatoly and Vladimir snapping rib bones out of a dead prisoner’s body, and Wilson Fisk turning one of those brothers’ brains into soup with his car door. This violence mostly skirts the line between impactful and being too much but they serve as great reminders that Daredevil is unlike anything Marvel has made so far. What does lessen their impact is when cursing is kept to the standards of broadcast cable and sex is eliminated entirely. I find sex and profanity to be useful in carefully selected doses[7] but to omit them entirely from this darker corner of the Marvel Universe keeps Daredevil less mature than it wants and deserves to be.

The Pedantic

Daredevil is as faithful an adaptation as we are going to get without delving into the mindless comic to film copy-and-pastes that we got from Watchmen. Therefore it’s hard to find much to harp on as for changes from page to screen. An interesting choice that Daredevil makes is bringing Matt’s costume in piece by piece. The proto-Daredevil costume that Matt wears in these first six episodes[8] is a black piece assembled out of scraps Matt could get on the Internet. While this does serve as a way to show Matt’s humble origins before truly becoming Daredevil you kind of lose the impact that the red devil costume inspires in fight scenes. It takes twelve episodes of Daredevil before our hero goes from the generic moniker of “the man in the mask”[9] to the much more iconic Daredevil. The proto-costume does grow on you by the end of the season but it’s a wash of relief when he puts on the horns for the first time.

[1] And won’t it be awkward when DD and Iron Fist meet for the first time and Danny realizes that Matt wore his signature look before he ever left K’un Lun?

[2] Note that he is never called the Kingpin in-series. The mystique behind Wilson Fisk is so great that not only is the speaking of his name punishable by death but his mere presence doesn’t necessitate a comic book sobriquet.

[3] Or, the “man in the mask” or the “man in black” as he is called in the first twelve episodes. It does get distracting when you keep picturing Johnny Cash fighting Hand ninjas in Hell’s Kitchen but I’d actually watch that show in a heartbeat.

[4] More on that in the “The Good” section.

[5] It’s a shame the deal for Spider-Man couldn’t be reached before this series was shot because it would be a treat seeing Urich having to deal with J. Jonah Jameson while also getting further into Daredevil and the Kingpin’s world. I’m also going to add to the sea of voices calling out for J.K. Simmons being recast as Jameson even though everything else about Spider-Man seems to be changing for inclusion in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

[6] And that deck of playing cards in his bag certainly alludes to a certain marksman that’s well known for being in the employ of the Kingpin in the comics.

[7] Unlike Game of Thrones, which seems to have a quota for number of nipples they must show in an episode.

[8] He doesn’t even get his trademark sticks until episode seven, appropriately called “Stick”.

[9] And can we please put a moratorium on “pre-hero identity identities”? Smallville had the red-blue blur, Arrow had the Vigilante, the Hood, and the Arrow without actually getting to his classic name, and the Flash even played around with the Streak before wisely getting a title a few episodes in. It’s a way to build “realism” in comic book adaptations when the temporary nicknames are far cheesier than the actual names.

*Next Time: We delve more into the origins of both Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk as supernatural elements are brought into Daredevil’s world.