Product Description

Darkman and durant return and they hate each other as much as ever. This time durant has plans to take over the citys drug trade using high-tech weaponry. Darkman must step in and try to stop durant once and for all. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 01/06/2004 Starring: Larry Drake Kim Delaney Run time: 92 minutes Rating: R Director: Bradford May

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #52282 in DVD
• Brand: Universal
• Released on: 1999-01-05
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 92 minutes

Amazon.com
Sam Raimi created Darkman with a potential franchise in mind, and his original movie had enough flair to suggest a sequel was warranted. Unfortunately (or perhaps wisely--for Raimi), he handed over the straight-to-video sequel duties to rookie director Bradford May, and nobody bothered to come up with much of a screenplay. As a result, Darkman II plays like a bad pilot for a proposed Darkman TV series, with Arnold Vosloo (best known as a villain in Jean-Claude Van Damme's Hard Target) doing his best to replace Liam Neeson in the title role. Sporting a dastardly scar and delivering lackluster punch lines as he kills his many enemies, Larry Drake returns from the first film as the villainous Durant, who wreaks havoc in his attempt to finance and manufacture the world's most destructive automatic weapons. As he supports the synthetic skin experiments of a like-minded scientist, the scarred hero known as Darkman thwarts Durant's ruthless plot, but the case proves costly for the intrepid crime reporter (Kim Delaney, pre-NYPD Blue) who allies herself with Darkman's efforts. Basically, this by-the-numbers plot serves as a tissue-thin vehicle for lots of explosions and gratuitous violence, and it's all about as inspired as a bad syndicated action show. Of interest only to those who were dazzled by the original Darkman, and even then it's a disappointment. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

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.

Very good!
All I can say is that I loved this movie from start to finish because of its splendid acting, cast, script, and everyting else. This movie is must see for all comic book fans because it's just GREAT!

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.