I just saw the movie Daredevil last night and I’m a little confused about two things.
First of all, what kind of lawyer is Daredevil? Near the beginning of the movie, Ben Affleck, as the blind lawyer alter ego is shown cross-examing an accused rapist in a courtroom. I got the impression that Daredevil must be a prosecutor but then all through the rest of the movie, his partner, played by that Swingers guy (not Vince Vaughn, the other guy) is always talking about getting better clients for their law practice.
So if Daredevil has a private practice, why was he prosecuting that rapist?
Second question: (minor, really) the scene where Joey Pants as the reporter throws a match and lights up two interlocking D’s (for Daredevil) which are apparently written on the ground in gasoline. How did Daredevil know that somebody was going to throw a match there? (and also, isn’t that evidence tampering/)
[William Shatner on SNL]It’s…just…amovie! Get…alife![/William Shatner on SNL].
Not having seen the film or read a Daredevil comic for about 17 years, I feel fully qualified to answer this question.
Some places do allow private prosecutions, and there can be civil suits as a result of criminal actions (Hi, OJ), and maybe he had some sort of hidden incendiary that was meant to go off just before Ralphie tossed his match.
Can I have my No Prize now, Mr. Lee?
Anybody who read the comics, is the movie worth seeing?
I don’t think you can have a private criminal prosecution, and that’s what this was. The guy is specifically “acquitted.” You don’t get acquitted in a civil case you’re found either liable or not liable.
I think it was just an inconsistency in the script. They must have changed him from a prosecutor to a private shylock in the middle of shooting. I swear that’s what it looks like.
It’s not a bad movie. btw, but I have no idea how closely it follows the comic books.
There can, under some circumstances, be private criminal prosecutions, or at least I’ve heard of them. If you’ll pay me $150.00/hr, I’ll even find you a cite. No guarantee on which side of the border it’s from, though.
Shylocks are loan sharks, shysters are lawyers. Get your terms right!
I’m planning to see it anyway, and I’ve forgotten most of the comic book stuff (I do remember that Michael Clark Duncan isn’t the first guy I’d think of to play the Kingpin, though) despite having read right through the whole Bullseye/Elektra thing and beyond. *Bonus for serious geeks: cast the movie version of the Elektra: Assassin miniseries.
As for it being an inconsistency in the script, I’ll stand by the Shatner portion of my post and add a Simpsons reference.
“Any time you see something like that, a wizard did it”.
I’d say the leading theory on the whole court scene is that they F-ed up. DD’s a private attorney, in the comic as well as the movie. I suppose it could’ve been a civil suit but they were far less then clear about that. And I also have never heard of a private criminal prosecution and I can’t imagine them existing. Why would the state hire someone when then already have a ton of lawyers with years of experience in prosecuting cases at their disposal? Thinking about the potential for abuse under such a system makes me shudder.
As for the gasoline on the ground I’m just gonna guess it was poetic license. It looked cool. We could ret con this as well and say that he wrote it in gasoline because that was all he had handy ('cause gasoline canisters are standard in NYC subway stations) but I won’t go there.
Sorry, I saw the movie and am a Daredevil whore as of late but I don’t think there are reasonable explanations for either of your questions.
In the comic, with one or two exceptions (in one case, he was nuts at the time) he has always been a private defense attorney who does a ton of pro-bono work and occasionally does a bit of civil law on the side usually for “Let’s show the readers, that I, a mere comic book writer, have a social conscience” purposes (so he’ll represent tenants suing a slum lord or a handicapped widow suing a drunken driver who hit her or something warm ‘n’ fluffy like that. (But luckily that doesn’t happen all that often.)
For a while in the early '70s where what was called “relevance” (usually ham-handed attempts to deal with complex issues) ran rampant, he had a “storefront law clinic” where he offered free legal services (or very low cost) to the poor ‘n’ disenfranchised. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but it was badly done.
But if they’re showing him as a prosecuting attorney in the movie, that’s a pretty big deviation from the comic.
The current writer who’s doing amazing things with the book is playing with the “Wait a sec…so you’re telling me that at night, you beat the snot out of muggers and give 'em to the police, then during the day, you work to defend 'em?” concept. He’s also dealing with the ethics of what amounts to the policeman who arrested you be your defense attorney. Great stuff.
I too would be very surprised to learn of the existence of “private criminal prosecutions” anywhere in the US, and FWIW, they sure as hell don’t exist in NYC. The DA’s office prosecutes everything, from the lowliest misdemeanor to the worst felony (well, the DOJ prosecutes federal crimes, but that’s the only exception).
Okay, I loved the movie, but my problem with the courtroom scene wasn’t even Murdock’s role as a prosecutor. It was just . . . the whole trial. They took the bad guy, made him the single most easily hated character ever written for a movie with just two lines, and then he gets away? They had a line that he had an expensive Kingpin lawyer, but frankly I thought the only way he could have gotten away after that performance was if he had expensive Kingpin jurors as well.
And don’t forget that the reporter was following Daredevil as closely as the police were. He might have a source within the police force. It’s possible that rather than listening to his police scanner, he got a call from someone in the department who said “hey, we have another one of those Daredevil killings, and they found something interesting this time . . . they won’t tell you about it, but they’re talking up a storm about it over on my end, and once all the reporters are gone they’re gonna set it on fire just to see it.”
Granted, none of that is in the movie, but it makes sense and the point is this guy knows his Daredevil stuff, so it was probably something he was keeping an eye out for.
That’s just it, he’s only a prosecutor in one scene. For the rest of the movie Murdock is the do-gooder private attorney you describe. His partner complains that Murdock will only take innocent clients with no money instead of rich, guilty ones. I really think it had to be a mistake with the script.
What was the deal with Bullseye? Is he a mutant, or just have incredibly great reflexes? I mean, maybe he sits around and practices throwing stuff all day, but I doubt it. And how was it that DD was apparently the only guy to ever make him miss?
Assuming that the movie follows the comic in Bullseye’s origin he’s a normal human who just happens to be the best marksman in history, that’s it. DD made him miss because his abilities are slightly beyond those of a peak human which presumably is the best that Bullseye had encountered before.
It was stated elsewhere that a normal human body couldn’t tolerate having an adamantim laced skeleton and that’s why it was done to wolverine with his healing factor. But hey, who expects technical consistency in comics?
Okay, it just kicked in here. I remember what I was thinking of when I mentioned private prosecutions. Pardon the gap in time, it’s probably got to do with the idiocy.
In a city where I used to live, one of the local firms had a contract with the government to handle drug prosecutions. I don’t know if it was the abundance of drugs or the fact that they had other things for the Crown Prosecutors to concentrate on, but that firm did those along with their usual civil and criminal work.
Any questions regarding conflict of interest or other ethical problems should be directed to the Law Society.
I think another question here would be how did the reporter know where the trail of gasoline was. IIRC, the cop was claiming there’s no evidence to suggest Daredevil was responsible for the incident in question, or that Daredevil even existed. Then, in all of Hollywood’s dramatic glory, the reporter throws a cigarette into the gasoline as the interlocking DD bursts into flames as if to say, “Ha! Doesn’t exist, huh?” The reporter already knew that not only was DD real, but he’s the one responsible for the whole subway ordeal. The cop was dubious, the reporter throws the match, the DD bursts into flames. Peculiar how he knew exactly where to throw the match, though.
He could have seen the trails of lighter fluid when he came down into the subway platform. They would have glistened as he passed under the lights. Remember, he knows what Daredevil’s mark looks like and how to spot it. The regular cops may just have thought it was spilled sprite or something.