Rating of
3/4
An Under-Rated Favorite!
MovieAddict - wrote on 02/11/12
Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) is a scientist who has it all; a loving girlfriend, a good life and the chance to make a difference with his synthetic skin experiments which could revolutionize skin grafting, except for one minor glitch; the synthetic skin degrades after 100 minutes of exposure to light.
That is until Robert Durant (Larry Drake) and his thugs break into his lab one night and savagely beat him, leaving him for dead and blowing up his lab in the process. But Westlake does not die; somehow he survives being dunked in a vat of bubbling acid which turns him into a horribly deformed freak. As such he is afraid to face his girlfriend, Julie Hastings (Frances McDormand) and retreats into the shadows as a creature of the night, as the Darkman. He begins to seek vengeance against the man who destroyed his life: Robert Durant, while at the same time battling the madness in his mind that threatens to consume him.
Seeing it twenty years plus later, and the film is still very fresh; at the end of the day; identifying with the freak inside all of us brings this tale into full fruition!
