It was March 19th, 2005 the day I published my first movie review on Rotten Tomatoes, a review of The Ring 2 which ended up being more of a rant against the critics, and other reviews of the film, than an actual review. While it paled in comparison to what I publish now, it was the defining moment that provided me with the movie reviewer bug.
It was July 9th, 2008 after having grown tired of a website that had truly turned "rotten" in it's poor support and functionality that I branched out on my own and Common Sense was born. But the real achievement, the real accomplishment worth bragging about occurred on July 22nd two years ago, the day I published my review of Darkman. As of today Darkman is my highest viewed review by an incredibly large margin (although Hannie Caulder is surprisingly catching up) with 1,067 unique views. That may not be a whole lot to some of you, but for a cracker jack joint like this it's pretty impressive. Now I'll never understand why Darkman has become this site's fortune and glory, but I guess having such a bizarre film as your most viewed when you review hundreds of more popular films is in a way a distinct niche to my own site. So in honor of my most popular recorded review I decided to put myself through the torture of watching the sequel Darkman II: The Return of Durant... enjoy.
Many years after the incident that left his body permanently burned Dr. Peyton Westlake (now played by The Mummy's Arnold Vosloo) is still trying to perfect a silicone that will sustain its form in sunlight for over 99 minutes that he might be able to live a more normal life. Peyton stumbles upon an article about another scientist attempting to create sun proof silicone, Dr. David Brinkman, upon presenting him his research the two decide to form a partnership. Ironically it's a partnership that doesn't last too long.
The man responsible for ruining Peyton's life was a big time crime boss by the name of Robert G. Durant. Supposedly killed (at the end of the first film) after the helicopter he was in plowed into a freeway underpass, but as luck has it he seemed to survive and after awaking from an almost two and a half year comma Durant is ready to rebuild his crime empire. The first step is to regain control of the weapons trade and to do that he needs to be able to offer something no one else has. He enlists the services of a harden criminal scientist and begins creation of a new deadly particle laser weapon. But to be able to manufacture these weapons he needs a warehouse equipped with a massive amount of power, that warehouse is Brinkman Electric, where new partner of Peyton, David Brinkman is running his experiments. Brinkman declines to sell, so Durant has him killed, thus once again severing the dreams of Peyton Westlake. Now Peyton is really angry and sets his sights on eliminating Durant once and for all.
Like the first film, nothing in Darkman 2 attempts to be remotely plausible. Durant could not have realistically survived the crash in the first film and Peyton's ability to make a perfect face masks (with hair) out of silicone pushes boundaries. But after two years of watching B-movies some of these unbelievable aspects don't bother me as much as they once did. Still I find more modern B-movies harder to sit through than the classic ones of the 50's, 60's and 70's. Something about watching a horribly scripted, directed and acted film with cutting edge special effects doesn't work as well as the all around low budget films which created the genre and really weren't trying to be horrible. The only positive things I can say about this sequel is 1) I didn't hate it anymore than the original and 2) I actually liked Arnold Vosloo in the role of Darkman better than Liam Neeson. Still Darkman 2 is horribly written, horribly overacted, and extremely melodramatic, full of old campy recycled one-liners. If you enjoyed the first film you'll get more of the same here, and while it's not my cup of tea it doesn't appear to deviate from the overall quality of the original, which actually isn't saying a whole lot.
4/10
Congrats on this anniversary, Answer ;) When's the party?
ReplyDeleteI didn't know Arnold Vosloo played in this movie. I always love when I see him somewhere other than our beloved THE MUMMY. He is such a charming guy.