Standard Of Review: How Daredevil Plays With Identity In Its Legal And Non-Legal Elements

Delving into identity issues in episodes 4-6 of Daredevil (spoilers).

In the fifth Daredevil episode “World on Fire,” Matt Murdock/Daredevil (Charlie Cox, and for purposes of this column, I am going to call him Matt) and his legal partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) take the case of Elena Cardenas (Judith Delgado), an elderly woman who is being constructively evicted out of her rent-stabilized apartment by a local Hell’s Kitchen slumlord who wants to tear the apartment building down and erect condominiums. Matt goes to the local police station to investigate the slumlord and is forced to wait in a seat behind a sign stating: “You Don’t Have to Reveal Your Identity to Stop Violent Crimes.” Of course, in a superhero show or film, any type of visual cue containing the word “identity” is a bit on the nose. But that scene nevertheless made me think about how Daredevil plays with the identities of the main characters, both in the show’s legal and nonlegal elements. This column will focus on (and contain spoilers for) the fourth, fifth, and sixth episodes of the season.

Matt believes that his identity is a completely selfless do-gooder. For example, after graduating towards the top of his class at Columbia Law School, he eschewed a Biglaw job and instead decided to start his own firm with Foggy that would represent the poor individuals of Hell’s Kitchen. In addition, despite his reputation for being a ladies’ man, Matt spends most of his nights as his superhero alter ego Daredevil, literally fighting crime in Hell’s Kitchen and ultimately aiming to take down criminal kingpin Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio).

But Matt is not necessarily the altruist that he perceives himself to be. He frequently has put others in danger, particularly Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), a nurse who attends to Matt’s wounds after a particularly rough night of crime fighting. Claire’s association with Matt brings her at odds with the Russian mob, which has made it its raison d’être to eradicate Matt. The Russians capture Claire, question her, and are about to start hitting her with a baseball bat — taking a page from Robert De Niro from The Untouchables — when Matt comes to save the day.

Dawson gives a solid performance as Claire (seriously, have the words “Rosario Dawson gave a bad performance” ever been spoken?), and she has great rapport with Matt, but Claire seems remarkably unperturbed that Matt has repeatedly placed her in imminent danger. Claire recognizes Matt’s importance to cleaning up Hell’s Kitchen, but eventually Matt’s borderline recklessness might end up killing someone he cares about.

Moreover, Matt is not dissimilar from the criminals he is fighting. For example, the sixth episode “Condemned” depicts the fallout of Fisk’s power play on the Russian mob, as Fisk kills or severely wounds most of the organization — including boss Vladimir Ranskahov (Nikolai Nikolaeff) — in a series of explosions. Vladimir and Matt — who have been enemies since the first episode of the show — hole up in a (conveniently located) abandoned warehouse in an attempt to evade the litany of corrupt cops on Fisk’s roster. Vladimir, under the mistaken belief that Matt murdered his brother, initially tries to kill Matt (Vladimir pretends to die right before giving Matt a key piece of information in a scene that was inches away from a similar, yet hilarious, scene in Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear), but he eventually comes to the realization that he and Matt have a common enemy — Fisk. And despite the fact that Matt abhors Vladimir, he needs to keep him alive in order to obtain more information about Fisk. Towards the end of the episode, they become strange bedfellows as Vladimir helps Matt escape the warehouse (I eagerly await their buddy road-trip comedy spin-off). But before Matt departs, Vladimir tells him that due to Fisk’s influence, the only way to stop Fisk is to kill him. Matt protests that he is “not a killer,” but Vladimir disagrees. He tells Matt that “once he put on that mask, [he] got in a cage with animals. Animals don’t stop fighting. Not until one of them is dead.”

Again, this is not a subtle scene (subtlety is not this show’s strong suit; it is a far cry from Mad Men), but it exemplifies Matt’s identity crisis. Matt believes that he has the moral high ground over Fisk, exemplified by Matt’s reluctance to kill anyone. But in order to actually stop Fisk and truly enact change, he will likely have to stoop to Fisk’s level. Accordingly, contrary to the aforementioned sign, Matt may indeed have to give up his “identity” in order to stop violent crimes.

Matt’s identity as an “animal” is underscored by the brutal fight scenes in these episodes. On Daredevil — unlike most movies or shows — the redshirt bad guys don’t go down with one punch. In order for Matt to defeat any of the Russian mob henchmen, he actually has to repeatedly punch or kick them. My favorite fight scene in these three episodes is a gorgeous long take depicting Matt fighting a group of henchmen outside a taxicab. The camera is mounted in the middle of the taxi (reminding me of a similarly-placed camera location in the fantastic car chase scene in Children of Men), and it rotates as the audience sees Matt fighting outside the different windows of the cab.

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As Matt is busy taking on various criminal enterprises in these three episodes, he does not have much time for lawyering (with the exception of a scene in which Matt and Foggy initially interview Cardenas as a potential client and Matt hilariously one-ups Foggy with his fantastic Spanish language skills; Foggy merely protests that he is equally polyglot because he can speak Punjabi). Instead, the lawyering is mostly left to Foggy. After learning that Cardenas’s slumlord Tully is being represented by the large law firm where Matt and Foggy had summered (but had declined full-time jobs), Foggy and the firm’s only employee Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) schedule a meeting to discuss the case. To Foggy’s chagrin, the associate representing Tully is Marcy, who happens to be Foggy’s ex-girlfriend and amusingly refers to him as “Foggy Bear.” Marcy gives Foggy an ultimatum — Cardenas can either take a small buyout to leave her apartment, or Tully will make conditions in the apartment so unbearable that Cardenas will be force to vacate. After initially being taken aback by Marcy’s presence, Foggy gains confidence and launches into a speech about how Cardenas and the other tenants will band together and refuse to leave. He threatens to take Tully to court, and proclaims that he has all the leverage.

Frankly, as an associate at a firm, I found this scene to be a bit weak. Marcy is extremely thrown by Foggy’s speech, as if she had not considered the possibility that Cardenas would balk at leaving her apartment. And Marcy is a complete caricature, mispronouncing Cardenas’s name, condescending to Foggy, and sarcastically telling him that “the law is always about the truth.” This scene seems more more appropriate for Suits than Daredevil.

Nevertheless, this scene explores how Foggy’s Biglaw background affects his identity. Typically, Foggy is gregarious, witty, and sarcastic, but as soon as he walks into the law firm’s lobby, he quickly becomes nervous and taciturn. Clearly, his short time at the law firm had a lasting impact on Foggy. I hope that Daredevil continues to explore this part of Foggy’s backstory, as well as the dynamic between this mega-law firm and Matt and Foggy’s tiny firm.

Fisk, who barely appears in the first three episodes, plays a much more prominent role in episodes four, five, and six. But Fisk is no ordinary supervillain, as his identity is split between a brutal murderer and a man suffering from so much anxiety that he occasionally seems more like Woody Allen than The Joker.

The audience’s first glimpse at Fisk has nothing to do with his involvement in a criminal enterprise; instead we first see him buying a painting from Vanessa Marianna (Ayelet Zurer). These episodes spend an inordinate amount of time depicting Fisk wooing Vanessa.  He first returns to the art gallery and clumsily asks her out. He then takes Vanessa to dinner, in which he acts more like a nervous teenager on a first date than a supervillain.

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But just in case we were forgetting that we were watching the show’s antagonist, one of the Russian mobsters, Anatoly Ranskahov (Gideon Emery) interrupts the dinner in an attempt to talk to Fisk. Fisk handles the encounter gracefully, but later that night, after dropping off Vanessa, he brutally murders Anatoly, repeatedly bashing Anatoly’s head with a door of an SUV.

During their date, Fisk tells Vanessa that his ultimate goal is to clean up Hell’s Kitchen, the place where he was born and raised. Fisk sells the point well; he makes the audience believe that his actions are based, at least in part, on altruism. But Fisk’s identity contains ambiguity; we do not know whether he is a delusional criminal or whether he truly believes that he is the city’s savior.

I look forward to seeing how the show plays with these characters’ (and others’) identities as the season progresses. And, after I could barely contain my glee in last week’s review that Elden Henson had played Fulton Reed in The Mighty Ducks, you all should be very proud of me that this column did not devolve into an in-depth exploration of the true identity of Gunnar Stahl.


Harry Graff is a litigation associate at a firm, but he spends days wishing that he was writing about film, television, literature, and pop culture instead of writing briefs. If there is a law-related movie, television show, book, or any other form of media that you would like Harry Graff to discuss, he can be reached at harrygraff19@gmail.com. Be sure to follow Harry Graff on Twitter at @harrygraff19.