Darkman II: The Return of Durant (1995)
Dir. Bradford May
Universal Home Video
Rating: C+
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 |
| ...and Darkman too, I guess |
The return of... who?
Oh right, the guy with the weird haircut from the first one. I think he chopped off fingers with a cigar cutter or something. He got exploded in a head-on collision between a low flying helicopter and a cement bridge. Somehow the writers decided he kicked out of this instead of simply creating a new villain for the second movie.
The proper title of this flick is “Darkman II: The Return of the Only Person We Could Get From the First One”. 'Cause this is 1995 and Liam Neeson is not returning your calls after (almost) winning an Academy Award for Schindler's List (1994). He's a serious actor now. No more sci-fi or comic book movies for him, no sir. Frances McDormand, similarly, was in the midst of actually winning an Academy Award for Fargo (1996), setting off a chain of events that'd result in her getting perennially nominated for starring in all the Coen Brothers movies that nobody actually watched.
Speaking of directors who haven't had a
finger on the pulse since 2007, Sam Raimi is nowhere to be seen
either. He's neither directing nor does he have any credits on the
screenplay other than the obligatory “Executive producer”
(translation: $50 tier Patreon donor) and “Based on characters
created by,”(translation: We paid him $100 to make this movie).
That's a shame as his unique visual style was easily the main draw of
the first one.
Replacing Liam Neeson in the role of main character Peyton Westlake / Darkman is none other than Imhotep himself, Arnold Vosloo. The obvious drop off in perceived skill aside, I've no problem with this. If ever there were a franchise that had a hardcoded excuse to recast the main character between each installment, this is it.
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The movie opens promisingly with a flashback to the first movie in which Liam Neeson gets his head dunked into a vat of exploding science goop by the minions of Robert G. Durant (Larry Drake).
We then pull out to reveal that this scene is a reshoot and said exploding science goop has completely transformed Liam Neeson into Arnold Vosloo, miraculously changing his hair color and length between frames and switching his accent from an Irishman attempting to sound American into a South African attempting to sound English. This retcon is completely unnecessary as Darkman's whole gimmick of wearing lifelike masks means he can feasibly be portrayed by just about any actor with only a throwaway line for explanation. All you had to do was start the story in media res and everyone would've gotten it.
That said, I'd be lying if I said Arnold Vosloo redubbing the scene of an exploding, flaming Liam Neeson flying by the camera didn't make the whole thing worth it.
It should be noted that Strack is completely cut out of both this recap and the movie on large, canonizing just how inconsequential a villain he was.
Flash forwards however many months to the present. Underworld crime boss Robert G. Durant kicks out of a coma he's been in for nearly three years. Everyone is just as surprised as I am that he could survive a head on helicopter crash that exploded him to death with only a couple facial scars to mark it. Such is life. In the meantime a power vacuum has arisen in [nondescript liberal run city] during Durant's absence. One that seems to make Darkman happy as increased drug dealer and gun runner violence means increased opportunity for him to steal from criminals to fund his research. Darkman is not so much a superhero as he is a self-interested third party that sometimes stops crimes when he feels like it.
Speaking of Darkman, he spends his days in full costume collecting useful scrap as one of the hundreds of itinerants in the poor side of town and his nights using it to build a full supervillain lair underneath the city inside the abandoned railway tunnels. Peyton, despite his protestation to the contrary at the end of the previous movie, is singularly devoted to perfecting his artificial skin formula and creating a mix that'll last beyond ninety-nine minutes in the sunlight so he can have a permanent replacement for his lost face. This retcon I don't mind as it gives him something to strive for and fits into my interpretation that Peyton was completely talking out of his ass at the end of the last movie due to being so juiced on adrenaline and guilt over getting his girlfriend endangered that he was willing to say anything to push her away.
Despite having a vested interest in remaining anonymous, Darkman for some reason insists upon doing almost all face-to-face dealings in this movie wearing a replica of his Peyton Westlake face, making him easily recognizable to anyone paying any modicum of attention. He's not stupid so I'm gonna read this as a character flaw of his. A manifestation of his need for validation of his self-worth. He wants to be Peyton Westlake again and wants to have real human connections. Vanity? A decent amount.
Durant's EVIIIIIIL plan is to legally purchase a condemned warehouse and use it to manufacture high quality domestic firearms to undercut the international gun smuggling cartels, thereby extricating them from the city and providing manufacturing jobs for the working class American criminal. The fiend! It just so happens that his property of choice is the current location for the lab of a Dr. David Brinkman (Jesse Collins) who, of course, is working on a light resistant polymer that Peyton figures would sync up nicely with his own research. Just as they're hitting things off, Durant's goons come a'calling for Dr. Brinkman.
You've seen the first movie so you can guess what happens next.
It's eventually revealed that Durant's plan goes beyond sensible gangster economics and into the land of Bronze Age comic book insanity. He jailbreaks and recruits the insane Dr. Alfred Hathaway (Lawrence Dane) and intends to use his knowledge to build ATOMIC POWERED RAYGUNS in lieu of the Russian tax write-offs the rest of the gangs are using. He's going to do a limited run of them and sell them to a local skinhead group to the tune of $5,000,000 a pop. Batteries not included. That's... so stupid I kinda love it. Setting aside the obvious logistical problem of consolidating power after you've handed off the weapons. What's to stop the skinheads from turning you into a smoking pile and stealing your scientist and Russian connection, Ivan Dragunov (Rod Wilson), who know how to manufacture the weapon and have access to the power supply respectively? Just a tiny logical oversight from an otherwise brilliantly petty blue collar villain plan.
Meanwhile, Peyton butts heads with Laurie (Renee O'Connor), Dr. Brinkman's sister, when she agrees to sell the property to Durant's front firm for $1,000,000 in cash after Durant organizes his murder to strongarm a sale. Even after Peyton tells her that Durant is the man who murdered her brother, she's still willing to go ahead with it until he provides irrefutable proof. A million dollars is a lot of money and she's currently living in the tumbledown side of town, barely scraping a living together in a strip club.
In order to win Laurie over to his side, Peyton begins feeding information about Durant's organization to news reporter Jill Randall (Kim Delaney) of trashy shock news program Street Copy. Jill is a total delight. In addition to being the best overall performance given in the movie (despite how briefly she's in it), the character smokes three packs a day, hates her shlocky job, and is ultimately proven to be very good at it when she deduces Darkman's identity through simple logic. When Jill confronts him about it, Peyton explodes into a paroxysm of rage and admits out loud both to her and to himself that he's going after Durant purely out of personal spite towards him for ruining his life, that avenging Brinkman is just the icing on the cake; that him even attempting to follow legal channels in the loosest sense by letting her on the case is just a means to fuck Durant over by preventing his firm from buying the Brinkman's property; whether or not anyone believes that Durant is alive, whether or not there is any evidence to convict or even arrest him should it be proven that he is, whether or not any of this amounts to more than a conciliatory gesture towards the notion of civility and due process; he is going to murder the ever-loving dogshit outta Robert G. Durant for his own personal pleasure and there isn't a damn thing anyone can do to stop him.
Well, he's got my
vote.
Jill goes through with the story, figuring she can wrangle Durant the old fashioned way by causing enough of a media stink. Peyton warily congratulates her. She then steps inside her car, turns the key and instantly explodes in a fireball. Whomp whomp. Well, if this movie has taught me anything it's that she'll probably be back for the next one.
Ultimately this does end up having the desired effect as Laurie Brinkman puts two-and-two together to realize that Robert G. Durant did indeed have her brother murdered and reneges on the decision to sell their property to him. She makes it out alive due to Darkman impersonating of one of Durant's thugs, Eddie (David Ferry), and helping her escape, trapping another one of Durant's goons in a glass revolving door in a callback to the first movie. This case of extreme deja vu tilts the hand to Durant that Peyton Westlake is once again mucking up his plans and he rather humorously draws a gun and begins chasing Peyton down the street on foot in the middle of rush hour traffic with all the gusto an out-of-shape forty year-old coma patient can muster as he cannot believe the cosmic level of bullshit required for this exact same set of circumstances to be happening to him again. I totally get it, man.
The finale of the movie is rather genre standard. Durant and his goons kidnap Laurie to lure Darkman into a trap, which he of course falls for like an idiot. Cue the obligatory Batman warehouse gunfight cum ninja goon elimination scene. That sentence looks really lewd now that I've written it down but it's too funny for me to want to edit it. Eventually Durant attempts to escape in his specially modified bulletproof longcar only to realize too late that Darkman has stuffed a pipebomb into the glove compartment. Durant gets exploded, not unlike how poor Jill did earlier. Vengeance sated, Darkman takes his leave of Laurie and returns to his life of... whatever the hell he was doing before this movie started. Collecting tin cans, I think.
In a postscript, Jill is memorialized on the TV for being a reporter of alleged integrity and Peyton tips his hat to her, musing that all his pursuit of vengeance has done is mar the world further and place him back exactly where he was at the start.
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Danny Elfman's themes are reused with additional music provided by Randy Miller. It's good. Unremarkable, but good. The VFX and makeup are similarly decent for the most part but the Darkman burned face mask is notably less articulate than the one in the previous film. Barring some really obvious ADR work and one horrifying nested mouth shot in the finale of Arnold Vosloo's teeth glimmering behind the oversized ones of the mask, it was close enough not to be immersion breaking. Little imperfections that a more seasoned director would've buffed out.
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The first film was inspired by Universal Monsters with a twist of Batman and The Shadow thrown in for flavor. This one is clearly inspired by Frank Miller's Daredevil run, as pretty much every street level superhero story produced between the years 1984 and 2007 was to some extent. The character of Jill Randall is functionally a genderswapped Ben Urich. The exposé piece she plans to release on Durant is even titled “The Fall of a Kingpin” if the references up until that point were too subtle. I happen to be a big fan of pre-”Sin City” Frank Miller's work so this was a plus for me. I even like RoboCop 3 (1993) quite a bit for all its faults. I just vibe with the man's work the way Portland hipsters vibe with Wes Anderson.
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FAVORITE QUOTES:
[flashback to the first film of Peyton's flaming silhouette flying by the camera as it gets exploded]
PEYTON: [redubbed by Arnold Vosloo]
AAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUH!
THUG: [rattles Darkman with an AK-47; Darkman blocks it with a manhole cover]
What the hell are you?!
DARKMAN: A concerned citizen. [frisbee chucks the cover into his face, knocking him flat; proceeds to root through the thug's drug deal briefcase, tossing the bags of coke out next to his mewling form before absconding with all the money just as the police arrive] Thanks for the donation.
DURANT: [watching scummy news show Street Copy recount the drug deal Darkman foiled]
Tragic. Simply tragic. I abhor violence. Especially when it doesn't make me money.
DURANT: [whilst his thugs torture Brinkman to death]
Quietly, gentlemen. This is a school night.
[Dragunov reveals he has a cache of Russian plutonium batteries]
HATHAWAY: Are they stable?
DRAGUNOV: These cells were manufactured by technicians in workers' paradise of eastern Uzbekistan. Only finest Yugoslavian materials were used in their engineering. They are reliable as your Ford Pinto.
DARKMAN: Eddie? You killed my friend.
EDDIE: [nervous chuckle] I'm sorry. Forgive me?
DARKMAN: Apology accepted.
[Darkman backhands him off a raised platform; Eddie falls and splatters the back of his skull open on the cement floor below]
[Durant trains the atomic rifle on Darkman]
DURANT: I can't tell you what an epic pain-in-the-ass you've been. But nothing lasts forever, pizza face.
[closing narration]
DARKMAN: Vengeance has many casualties, the guilty and the innocent. My salvation was buried with those who would rescue me from revenge. And so, I continue to face the darkness... alone.
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