Martin Carr reviews the first episode of Daredevil season 3…
From out of the ashes and bomb blast rubble emerges a shell shocked and bleeding Matt Murdock. Concussed, hearing impaired and washed up on a derelict shoreline this is how we are thrown back in as our anti-hero hits rock bottom. Disillusioned, deserted and emotionally barren this Matt Murdock no longer seeks sanctuary, feels no affinity with God and seeks no clarity on his position. Elektra is gone and injury, inflammation and soul destroying epiphanies have robbed this man of everything he holds dear. Holed up beneath an orphanage relying on medical care administered by literal servants of God, irony is never far away in an opener which spreads the narrative deck like a Las Vegas croupier and gathers you round.
Incorporating crucial sound design which puts us inside his head ‘Resurrection’ draws hope from a hopeless perspective, jumps between essential central characters mixing flashback and point of view to maximum affect. There is no quick fix montage, no sudden realisation and no moments of superhuman rebirth. If anything this is more about a restoration of faith than any sort of physical healing. From Foggy and Karen through to Murdock and his carers there is a mixture of memories combined with their need for closure. Charlie Cox portrays that sense of resignation and vulnerability which has so defined him in the role. Broken spiritually as well as physically this Daredevil has absorbed every element of him, leaving nothing but emotional carnage in his wake. Cox continues to challenge our expectations whilst broadening the range and depth of character without drifting towards brooding melodrama or cliché. However Wilson Fisk still proves dominant in the limited screen afforded him here.
Vincent D’Onofrio has given Kingpin such an air of unpredictability and intellectual savagery that even motionless he demands your reverence. Silencing the prison with a word whilst classical music drowns out other inmates, his glacial presence and sheer size remind you in seconds of that ability to terrify. Those meticulous cooking methods disarm whilst expressing the exacting nature of this man capable of murder between concertos. It is a performance of such barely confined rage locked away beneath paper thin civility that the slightest thing might set it off. Already vengeance permeates the air in need of the smallest catalyst, merest nudge or subtlest excuse. Which is why as our anti-hero heads out looking to be released from his physical prison through pain and suffering, that meeting of minds in those final minutes foreshadows the death knell we all feared was coming.
Martin Carr
