Just another Batman, but with all due modesty. And beyond modesty, all due shame. (Modesty on the production level; shame on the level of the plot.) The demands of bloody revenge, it develops, have taken their toll on his inner self; and the Phantom-of-the-Opera scar tissue over three-quarters of his face, and over a smaller fraction of his body, reflects what sort of man he has become, as well as what compelled him in the first place to become it. This gives him a dimension, if not fully and Sophocleanly tragic, at least not "feel-good" — and here already Darkman has a bargaining chip which can't be matched by previous comic-book superhero extravaganzas, and which goes a long way to compensate for any shortcomings in the production. Director Sam Raimi goes an additional length to compensate for those with a briskness and breeziness of treatment that hark back to the heyday of the B-movie, not to mention the DC comic book. This allows little time for noticing any holes in the plot, and just enough time to appreciate such suitably surrealistic touches as the prosthetic leg that encases a machine gun, or the cigar-box collection of severed fingers, or the crucial science-fictional premise that enables the avenging hero to transmute himself into a dead ringer for any of his enemies, but only for ninety-nine minutes at a time. Given the special (if small) claims of the movie, it seems a pity to have turned the footage over to Danny Elfman for a musical score in the standardized "house" style of Batman and Dick Tracy. With Liam Neeson, Frances McDormand, and Larry Drake. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
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