'Daredevil: Born Again' season 1 review: Disney+ crime action thriller takes the heat in Hell's Kitchen

Disney+

No matter what, there are always plenty of Fisk in the sea, especially if your superhero franchise desperately needs to bring back some beloved characters because you've been in a slump in recent years. Oops. Without further ado, let's discuss Daredevil: Born Again, the sequel series created by Chris Ord, Dario Scardapane and Matt Corman, based on Marvel Comics, acting as a continuation for 'Daredevil'. Still blending legal and crime drama shenanigans with action but just with a new name polish, we return to New York City where we're greeted by our old pal Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), a blind lawyer with a bad case of superpowered masked hero, known as Daredevil. After celebrating with his pals and colleagues Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) and Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), a sudden tragedy and return of familiar foe Benjamin Poindexter (Wilson Bethel) changes Matt's plans and life altogether.

Some time later, Matt has seemingly retired his superhero persona and is currently working at a new law firm, with a whole new team like lawyer Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James) and private investigator Cherry (Clark Johnson). Matt also falls head over heels with a popular therapist and author named Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva) whose clients include Matt's old nemeses Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer) and Wilson "Kingpin" Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio); Wilson has recently returned to limelight and is running for mayor. After Wilson wins the election, with anti-vigilantism action being his main agenda, Matt and Wilson are once again headed for a violent collision, whilst Matt is desperate to reunite with his alter ego when new cases require a personal investment from him.

First things first, calling this a first season of a new series feels like a treacherous act of unethical journalism because, truth be told, it's extremely misleading. It's hard to imagine anyone jumping into this show cold and understanding the stakes whatsoever since the relationships, character motivations and milieus are pre-existing, starting with the aforementioned tragedy, which is meant to be a gutpunch and gets the ball rolling here. Therefore, it'd be easier to approach "Born Again" as a fourth instalment in this crime saga in order to set one's expectations appropriately.

From there on out, you'd be delighted to find out that stepping back into this world feels like you've never missed a beat, mainly because the returning actors certainly have not. Cox is still just as charismatic and watchable in the lead role as he was the first time around, contrasting Matt's sense of justice and determination with his complicated fascination with violence and a specific kind of self-harm. D'Onofrio on the other hand clearly enjoys going big with Wilson, turning this sometimes goofy yet heightened reality into something classical, and playing the character's relationship with fascism and rage with the right amount of theatricality most of the time, so much so that you can forgive the few slip-ups towards overacting since his ambition is admirable. The acting in the show is solid overall as newcomers and old-timers doing guest appearances all fit quite nicely in the symphony led by Cox and D'Onofrio.

What is also reassuring is seeing some real grit and bite driving the storytelling since those things have certainly been lacking in Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), in which the series is now trying to find its place. Showrunner Scardapane and his writers' room (including Heather Bellson) are mostly dropping Matt and other characters into a situation where the corrupt and undereducated cops are very much present and thriving, a tyrant is rising to a powerful position and the system begins to crumble when it is being poisoned with fear and bloodlust. The general "ACAB" vibes—notably in the first half of the season—are rather refreshing considering how toothless the franchise has been, and it also makes sense that it requires a man without fear to disrupt the corrupt system and its nefarious leader. Combine this with relentless guilt haunting Matt personally and you definitely have enough drama to work with.

Not everything about the storytelling works, though, as this nine-episode outing can be quite the hodgepodge of differing visions (three creators/showrunners, original group of directors, new director duo Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, producers managing the franchise). You get a direct continuation for the original show, a case-of-the-week legal drama and a grungy case-of-the-week crime thriller (there's a standout episode featuring a bank heist and another one with a serial killer so this one might be the strongest version of Born Again) all in one, and that is before you get the occasional side quest where we follow the Fisks' political machinations. Maybe, just maybe, there were in fact too many cooks in Hell's Kitchen. Okay, I'll stop, I promise.

Those seams are easy to see and they're very distracting at times because the season doesn't really have any sort of structure once you reach episodes three, four and five. You also get a sense that some writers were more interested in realistic (read: better) courtroom dialogue than others so it's not terribly surprising that the legal drama material gets left behind earlier in the season since the quality in that particular realm fluctuates so much. Bringing back familiar faces comes with its own share of hits and misses, too, but at least a few of those capable actors have interesting characters to portray.

One bit of good news is that while the construction can resemble Frankenstein's monster as the story moves along, the series is at least consistently entertaining due to the performers and some of the craft on display. If you're familiar with the original run, it will not shock you that the stunt and fight choreography (overseen by stunt coordinator and second unit director Philip Silvera) is the biggest flex that Born Again has to offer, ranging from rigorous (stitched together) long takes like one in the first episode to bone-crushing impact hits later on. There are also neat camera and editing (Cedric Nairn-Smith, Melissa Lawson Cheung) tricks utilised when visualising Matt's superhuman senses like his version of echolocation, and the soundscape (supervised by Jon Borland, mixed by Tom Myers) elevates many of those sequences by underlining the overwhelming yet tactical nature of his powers.

On the flip side, the sound team has to work overtime (hopefully only figuratively unless their pay is generous) to compensate for the oddly muted and disjointed musical score, which seemed to have followed in the footsteps of a lacking episodic structure. The main theme is credited to The Newton Brothers and perhaps they provided other leitmotifs, but the end result feels like it was cobbled together as the show itself was reimagined and it surely does sound like a bunch of discordant ideas as well as placeholder compositions and different production styles looking for cohesion.

The series bobs, weaves and moves fairly effectively when Matt and Wilson's paths begin to collide towards the end of the season, but the finale itself can be rather unsatisfying since it's trying to split the difference between paying off Wilson's rise to power and pretty much serving as a first episode for the next season for some diabolical reason. Then again, maybe it truly is the finale that the show deserves. After all, Born Again is often erratic yet very enjoyable and stimulating popcorn TV, thanks to Cox and D'Onofrio steering the drama and the show periodically finding something to say as well. You should be a-Mused enough.

Smileys: Stunt choreography, Charlie Cox, Vincent D'Onofrio

Frowneys: Structure, score

Robbing a bank requires luck of the Irish if you want to get away with it.

3.5/5

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