Darkman II: The Return of Durant

Sadly,
The lack of Liam neeson and raimi's directing is what ruined this movie for me. While Mr. Vasloo is superb in his taking on the burden of the Liam created character and mr. Drake always has appeal, the movie as a whole needed a much better script. It was too predicatble, too phoney.

On the bonus side, they did manage to keep the hapahazard and crazy comments Darkman makes during chases and fight scenes in tact, so that was a plus.

Durant Might Be Back But Nobody Else Is
It's been about 10 years since I saw Sam Raimi's original 'Darkman' but I decided to give this direct-to-video sequel a try for a number of reasons. First off it stars one of my favorite villains, Arnold Vosloo ('Hard Target' which was also produced by Raimi and Robert Tapert), second it also features the super sexy Kim Delaney ('NYPD Blue') and finally it was only a $1 brand new. As a movie it's pretty terrible due to its over-the-top and cartoonish nature. But as a comic book movie it's very entertaining. It tries very hard (and occasionally succeeds) to recapture the style and spirit of the original.

Now that Peyton Westlake (Vosloo) has defeated his mortal enemy Durant (Larry Drake) he can focus all his energy into his life's work - creating a synthetic mask that will cover his horribly disfigured face. The only problem is that in all of his experiments he can never get the mask to last longer than 99 minutes. Peyton joins forces with a fellow scientist who's also...

Return of Durant
I bought this title because Arnold Vosloo was a leading member of the cast, and I've come to appreciate his characterizations. I'd not seen the original Darkman, so I had no preconceived notions of what the series was like, I therefore enjoyed it more than a connoisseur of the genera might have. I did seen Darkman III first, however, and enjoyed it more; perhaps because I enjoyed Jeff Fahey as a bad-guy more than I did Larry Drake. They do say that the quality of the villain makes the film. I also thought Mr. Vosloo's Darkman was more brittle in II than in III. Perhaps the quality of the bad guy effected his performance too, or maybe he was just getting used to his character and the series and was only beginning to develop his own particular point of view on both. I tend to agree with the reviewers who felt that the series would make a better subject for TV than for Cinema.

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