Daredevil

Give the devil his due. After the success of the Marvel Comics movies X-MEN (2000) and SPIDER-MAN (2002), the resulting superhero wave might have begun cannibalizing its own conventions or spiraling into impenetrable insiderism. But this big-screen adaptation of the long-running comic-book series dodges those bullets. A larger-than-life action melodrama, it makes clear that superhero films are the next evolutionary generation of action movies: Now that Schwarzenegger-styled heroes have upped the action ante as far as the human body can go and remain even marginally believable, it's up to superheroes and virtual-reality realms like THE MATRIX to take it further. As a ...