Darkman (Sam Raimi, 1990)

Sometimes, style is substance. Darkman, a movie where the characters are paper-thin and the dialogue is deliberately reminiscent of comic book word balloons, children's cartoons, half-remembered b-movie double features on late-night TV, and pulp paperbacks, is a deeply strange and highly personal blend of childhood and adolescent enthusiasms that, in its best moments, looks like a visual tap directly into Sam Raimi's subconscious. I wish the film had been a little longer and dug deeper into its characters, but I didn't mind that much because what's there is so enjoyable.

Raimi, directing his first studio film (appropriately, for Universal) and his fourth feature (following the first two Evil Dead movies and Crimewave), took a short story he wrote for fun as a tribute to '30s Universal monster movies and adapted it into a screenplay with his brother Ivan (his other brother Ted acts in the movie). The screenplay went through the usual Hollywood studio meat grinder, getting some revisions by other screenwriting teams until fortunately landing back in the hands of the Raimi brothers for the final pass. (The writing credits fill the entire screen in the opening credits sequence.)

Though Raimi says the studio made him take out some of the wildest stuff, what's left of Darkman is a feverish mixture of the aforementioned Universal monster movies (especially Frankenstein), superhero comics (especially Batman), EC comics, mad scientist sci-fi, '80s action blockbusters, horror b-movies, slapstick comedy, a milder version of early-'80s Euro-horror, tragic romances, The Elephant Man, and a sprinkling of dozens of other elements and influences (including brief hints of Phantom of the Opera and then-contemporary rock video aesthetics).

I suspect all this personality and idiosyncrasy would have been sanded away and smoothed over if the film had been bankrolled by studios today. I haven't seen them to judge for myself, but I've read from people I trust that this is what happened on Raimi's last two films, Oz the Great and Powerful and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. There's no room for personal vision in the 21st century big leagues, where everything is content and shareholders are more important than audiences and artists. An obvious point, so I'll stop before you have to tap the "old man yells at cloud" sign.

So, Darkman. Liam Neeson plays Peyton Westlake, a brilliant scientist developing a synthetic skin replacement for burn victims with fellow scientist Yakitito (Nelson Mashita) on equipment that looks like a cross between Paul Verhoeven's science fiction films and Dr. Frankenstein's lab. They can get the skin just right for 99 minutes until it disintegrates into a pile of goo. Meanwhile, Peyton's girlfriend Julie Hastings (Frances McDormand) is a lawyer whose major client is sleazy billionaire developer Louis Strack Jr. (Colin Friels). Julie has uncovered a paper trail of evidence that Strack is paying bribes to get his waterfront development approved. When she confronts him about the bribes, Strack says they're a necessary evil to prevent the development from going to the other major bidder, crime kingpin Robert G. Durant (Larry Drake, best known for L.A. Law and Dark Night of the Scarecrow).

Durant finds out about Julie's possession of the documents, and he and his gang show up at Peyton's lab, steal the evidence, rough up Peyton and Yakitito, knock over a bunch of equipment, and blow the place to smithereens. These guys are fans of big, destructive gestures, and they don't care who knows it. (Durant also cuts off the fingers of people who get on his bad side and keeps the fingers in a velvet-lined case in his study.) Peyton is propelled into the river from the explosion and is presumed dead when all anyone can find is a piece of his ear.

It's no spoiler to tell you that Peyton is not dead. It's Liam Neeson, dude. He's got top billing. The now hideously disfigured Peyton rebuilds his lab in an abandoned factory (the movie skips any exposition about how he made this happen besides the salvaging of a few pieces of old equipment from the explosion site), vowing revenge on Durant and his henchmen. Peyton creates latex skin masks of his enemies and messes with them in deadly 99-minute capers. When his own mask is finally ready, he reenters Julie's life in 99-minute excursions before she gets suspicious about all this 99-minute malarkey and learns the full truth. Many crazy things happen before the wild two-scene conclusion involving helicopters and unfinished skyscrapers, with cameos from Jenny Agutter, Joel and Ethan Coen, William Lustig, Julius Harris, John Landis, William Dear, Toru Tanaka, and Bruce Campbell.

Aside from a few early scenes of domestic bliss between Peyton and Julie and a few scenes after their reunion, the movie avoids character development and quiet detail in favor of action and style, though that style is packed with raw emotion and personality. The movie is also unafraid of ending on an admirably un-Hollywood downbeat ambiguity (though this ending also sets up the possibility of a sequel or twelve).

In a movie this heightened and removed from everyday experience, actors sometimes have a tendency to play extra-large and too knowing, giving performances that are essentially a nonstop wink to the audience. Part of the reason Darkman works as well as it does is that Neeson, McDormand, and Drake play their characters seriously and earnestly. The craziness is happening from the supporting and bit players, the sets and production design, the images, and the events in the story, but our leads avoid the tendency to camp and whoop it up. This grounding in real feeling, along with Raimi's earnest enthusiasm for filmmaking, saves Darkman from being a mere exercise in style. Darkman is a little tame compared to the Evil Dead movies, but it's still unmistakably an extension of Raimi's imagination without too much compromise. I had fun watching it when I was 13 or 14, and I had just as much fun watching it last night.

For such an odd movie, Darkman did well financially. It wasn't a massive blockbuster hit, but it turned a nice profit and did great on home video, and Raimi got to go even bigger for the conclusion of his Evil Dead trilogy, Army of Darkness. Darkman also got two straight-to-video sequels, with Arnold Vosloo taking over for Neeson, who obviously didn't need straight-to-video work at that point in his career. I haven't seen them, but without Raimi directing, I'm not too interested.

Despite his absorption into the CGI franchise machine, I'm still a Raimi fan, and I hope he gets to make some cool stuff again. Besides Darkman, I love the Evil Dead movies, his episode of the Ash vs. Evil Dead TV series, and his neo-noir thriller A Simple Plan, and I'm also a fan of Drag Me to Hell and his first two Spider-Man movies, which are the only two superhero movies of the 21st century I enjoy without reservation. I still need to catch up with Crimewave, The Quick and the Dead, and The Gift, but I'm keeping my distance from Spider-Man 3, the Kevin Costner baseball movie, and the recent franchise biz. Am I wrong about those? Should I check them out?