by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Given the box-office success of X-Men, Spider-Man and Blade, it was only a matter of time before Marvel Comics got the cameras rolling on Daredevil. For many, it’s another round of frights, fights and men in tights, and in that respect it delivers the goods. But the Daredevil character is the one that comic-book buffs will be most defensive of, the one voted most likely to be fucked up by Hollywood. The fans have good reason to be wary.

For the uninitiated, Daredevil is a blind vigilante (and lawyer by day) whose other senses - hearing, balance, touch and smell - have been magnified to a superhuman degree. From his conception in the mid-’60s, according to Stan Lee (creator of all of Marvel’s major characters), he was intended to be the most brooding, complex, morally ambiguous and “adult” character in the company’s pantheon of crooks and crimebusters.

Come the turn of the ’80s, writer/illustrator Frank Miller took the double D even further down that path. Miller brought two important elements to Daredevil, and arguably to mainstream comics as a whole. Firstly, he employed bold, original and explicitly cinematic storytelling devices, most notably his stacked “widescreen” panels. Secondly, dispensing with the goofy hyperbole and wisecracks of other Marvel titles, he wrote dialogue that sparked and crackled with gritty realism.

The Miller years in Daredevil’s run can be credited with convincing countless readers to stick with the comics medium even after puberty, among them actor Ben Affleck and director Mark Steven Johnson. It’s specifically the Elektra/Bullseye story arc, the high point of Miller’s tenure on the title, which they’ve brought to life with the new Daredevil film.

There have been some alterations, mostly cosmetic. Über-villain Kingpin is now black. The suddenly Irish Bullseye - whose “superpower” is the ability to zing anything from ninja stars to paper clips with lethal force and accuracy - doesn’t have a costume per se. And, uh, Elektra, Daredevil’s Greek ninja-lady paramour/nemesis, has red hair (also, Alias star Jennifer Garner doesn’t bring the right touch of mystery to the role). Other than that, it’s pretty bang-on if necessarily contracted - right down to Bullseye’s infamous “And now for my next trick” line (the “To be or not to be” of comic-book geekdom).

And there’s more for the geeks in there too. The cameos by Stan Lee and Frank Miller (credited as Man with Pen in Head) are just the most noticeable of the countless nods to Marvel’s army of inkslingers.

Those who groaned at the rubber-man digital effects in Spider-Man will be thankful that they’re kept to a minimum here. Given that martial arts were an essential element of the original storyline, the filmmakers rounded up Hong Kong action choreographer Cheung Yan Yuen (brother of Crouching Tiger’s Yuen Wo Ping) to keep the fights between real people, if not all that realistic.

The real hero of this production, though, would have to be sound designer Steve Boedekker. As Daredevil’s magnified hearing is his primary interface with the world, precise tweaking and placement of sound are of utmost importance here. Too bad he couldn’t phase out the shitty emo-metal CHOM rock that blights the soundtrack. :

Daredevil opens Friday, Feb. 14

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