Everybody's a critic - 'Daredevil'

HHH

"Daredevil" is definitely action packed and keeps its comic-bookesque reality while leaving room for the viewer's imagination to fill in the voids. But I found it lacking in plot.

The predictable scenario of boy meets girl, boy loses girl is followed with the subplot of trying to make rights out of other people's wrongs. While at the same time fighting his own demons and trying to justify his own actions, Murdock/Daredevil (Ben Affleck) strives to convince himself as well as others that "I am not the bad guy!"

The best fight sequence is early in the film when Elektra (Jennifer Garner) and Murdock get to know one another through martial arts. They are cheered on by children in a school yard. The choreography is precisely executed. The remaining fight scenes left me with a desire for more blood. The result is unbelievability on my part.

- Stephanie Williams, baker

H

New movie, cool graphics and strong actors but "Daredevil" is the same old story rehashed: Childhood trauma that changes a good kid into a dark, withdrawn vigilante.

This movie feels like a cross between "Laura Croft, Tomb Raider" and "Batman." I thought it does a good job of showing how when a person loses his sense of sight the other senses sharpen. It also shows that the judicial system will fail you, that it is OK to execute your own kind of punishment, and that part of the solution to a deep, dark hurt is to take drugs to ease the pain.

Understanding that we are seeing the world as "Daredevil" does, dark and unjust, as the mother of two teenage sons I did not feel this was an image that I wanted them to view as a positive solution to life.

- Barb Gleason, nurse

H

Ben Affleck's character, Daredevil, is a blind attorney who inflicts justice on defendants when the wrong verdicts are rendered. Lawyer by day, judge and jury correcting blind justice by night, he operates in the New York neighborhood where he grew up, where his dying, murdered father instructed him, "Never give up, be fearless."

This movie is loaded with action and suspense. Somewhere in Cape Girardeau, surely, are Marvel comic devotees who will enjoy it. I closed my eyes to avoid witnessing the worst of the gruesomely violent deaths that dragged on and on as the villain, Bulls-eye, hurled an awesome array of lethal missiles, including shards from a Catholic church's stained glass window.

"Daredevil" is brutal, frightening, confusing and murky. It gets one star for the rare poignant moments between Daredevil as a boy with his father, and as an adult with his love interest.

- Joan Slaughter, retiree