Rating: 
Summary: Comic Book style film
Review: Darkman has been one of my favourites for a while. The movie may be comical at some times but also kind of believable in a weïrd way. Sam Raimi's best art work with good camera angles and a very wonderfully composed score by Danny Elfman. Liam Neeson plays Payton Westlake a scientist on the verge of discovering a breakthrough in the world of skin synthetics. But when a group of thugs destroy his life to steal a document, everything is gone. Brutally scared from burns that would be uncontrollable pain, and altered by a experimental treatment, he begins to assume identities and to revenge Peytons death. Darkman is rated R for Adult Content, Violence, and some language. Personally I would give this movie a PG-13 rating due to its comic bookesque feel, it isn't extremely believable, and the language is mild, with no sexual content or nudity.
Rating:
Summary: Comic THRILLER!!
Review: I'm not a Darkman fan but I have to admit this movie was great. There is lots of good action and great lines. I certainly loved this movie. Great!
Rating:
Summary: Darkman is out there
Review: "Darkman" is a good action movie and features a great performance from Liam Neeson. Scientist Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) and his partner are trying to create an antidote in the form of recreated skin from a model, for people with damaged skin, such as burns or scars. Some criminals kill Peyton's partner and blow up the whole lab, and Peyton gets injured so severely that everybody thinks he is dead, even his girlfriend, Julie (Frances McDormand). Peyton will do anything he can to get his hands on the criminals that destroyed his life and made him into this unknown madman."Darkman" has some great special effects, a good plot, and best of all, great acting. After he's injured, Peyton becomes a totally different person by developing a flaming temper. Liam Neeson does so good of a job that it will make you wonder who the real criminal is, Peyton or the men that destroyed everything he had. "Darkman" is like many kinds of movies wrapped into one. It's mainly an action movie, but it has both sci-fi and horror characteristics involved in parts. If you like great action movies, I would recommend getting "Darkman." The two sequels to the movie are also good, but this one is the best.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the better superhero movies, but not one of the best
Review: Before the Spider-Man franchise, Sam Raimi helmed another comic book superhero film: Darkman. It is the story of many superheroes: a freak accident leaves a man as a societal outcast, struggling to come to grips with this freak that he has become. The first two-thirds of Darkman are superb, but the end of the movie betrays what came before it.
Liam Neeson stars as Dr. Peyton Westlake, a scientist who is working on developing a sort of artificial skin, but the only time the skin can last longer than 99 minutes without combusting is when it's in the dark. When Peyton's girlfriend Julie (Frances McDormand) stumbles upon a memorandum that proves a wealthy land developer named Strack (Colin Friels) has been making underhanded payoffs, a kingpin named Robert G. Durant (Larry Drake) and his men bust into Peyton's lab, killing his assistant and leaving Peyton brutally maimed, with only about one-fourth of his face remaining.
Julie believes that Peyton is dead when all they could find of him was an ear, but meanwhile Peyton has set up shop in an abandoned warehouse, continuing to work on his invention. He doesn't want anyone, most especially Julie, to see him in his disfigured state, and he begins using his artificial skins as disguises to go after Durant and his men and extract his revenge.
When Darkman is concentrating on Peyton's feeling as he struggle to deal with being disfigured, it is very effective. Where it falls apart for me is when Peyton magically turns into an action hero; it's hard to believe that this scientist, who was badly burned and left with no superpowers except the ability to withstand pain, is able to suddenly fight like a regular martial artist. I understand that this is a superhero movie, and that's what's supposed to happen, but in the best movies of this genre (see: Spider-Man and Hulk), there is sufficient reasoning provided. But this is probably nitpicking, and Darkman can still be considered one of the better (though not one of the best) comic book superhero films.
Rating:
Summary: Greatest Raimi's movie ever made
Review: This is the best Raimi movie.
Raimi used many dramaturgies in Spider man which were already used in Dark man.
I think that the fact tells us how great this movie is...
I truly hope that Raimi will come back soon with Evil Dead 4!
Rating: 
Summary: Great Movie But Where Are The Extra Features?
Review: This is a great movie and I am definately going to buy the remaining Darkman DVD's. The only thing is that there is no extra features such as trailers, commentaries, behind the scenes, etc. I normally do not watch movies more than once but this one I would watch over again.
Rating:
Summary: Darkman = Phantom of the Opera??
Review: I have to admit, I didn't watch this movie because I'm a huge Sam Raimi/ Liam Neeson fan. I watched it purely because there was a masked man running about in a black fedora and coat, with a mask that reminds one suspiciously of the Phantom of the Opera, and I'm a HUGE POTO fan. So I watched it, and yes, while the script is somewhat pedestrian, the acting and directing more than makes up for it. And admit it, the similarities between POTO and Darkman are there- beautiful girl,romantic danger, scarred face, hidden lair, and all the idiot bad guys getting theirs just because they destroyed his life/got in his way/pissed him off. All in all, a good movie for any action/horror flick fan, POTO phanatic or otherwise.
Rating:
Summary: Face----Off!
Review: Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson)has it all: he's a research scientist pioneering cutting edge treatments in skin graft technology, using his well-stocked science lab and dedicated science interns to develop synthetic skin.
But wouldn't you know it, Peyton also has woman problems. Not that ambitious lawyer Julie (Frances McDormand) doesn't adore him: quite the contrary. But Julie is sniffing out corruption at City Hall, and makes the disastrous mistake of leaving documents---the Bellisarius Memorandum!---implicating powerful local land developer Louis Strack Jr. (Colin Friels) in Peyton's lab.
Henchman and sadist Robert G. Durant (Larry Drake) shows up, and shuts down Peyton, his lab, his eager interns, and his science project---with extreme prejudice, enlisting a little torture, dismemberment, mutilation, and general havoc and brutality (as well as the ever useful Evil Villain Exploding Laboratory technique) to provide Dr. Peyton Westlake with a generous---if sudden---early retirement package.
But the explosion that obliterates Westlake's lab and covers up the cigar-chomping Durant's dirty deeds also catapults the unlucky scientist into the harbor, sparing his life. There *is* a downside: He's burned, he's folded, he's spindled and mutilated and doesn't have much of a face---indeed, what's left looks sorta like what happens when you stretch a particularly hot, stringy, cheesy pepperoni pizza---but being a (now mad)scientist, he's got an ace up his labcoat.
He has the Synethetic Skin, and a Score to settle: so he uses the Skin as a ready-made disguise, a kind of Face-Club-for-Men, providing him with all sorts of convenient methods by which he can infiltrate the Enemy and destroy him. Problem is, the Synethetic Skin isn't quite ready for prime time (or even, say, Joan Rivers's face): it's highly unstable and degrades into a useless blob (hi, Pizzaface!) in 99 minutes. Plus maybe a little longer when it's Dark.
Consequently, Peyton Westlake becomes the incredible melting Darkman, and we get treated to what would, in retrospect, be a midpoint for director Sam Raimi's career. He hadn't quite left the sick indie glory world of "Evil Dead", and he hadn't quite entered the Hollywood mega-blockbuster zone of "Spider-Man". Result: gore, goop, and a happily demented anti-superhero origin story.
I love Spider-Man; particularly the second installment, in which Sam Raimi nailed the reality of the superhero's lonely life. But for all the flamboyant glory of his Spidey series, it's not gory, it's not sick, it's not deviant, it's not damn-the-torpedoes disgusting---it's not really meant to be.
By contrast, "Darkman" is the all-American superhero by way of "Evil Dead", the slum-dweller equivalent of "Spider-man", sorta like Spidey's trailer-dwelling cousin who lives across town near the chemical plant. Raimi is at his warped best here, and Darkman reveals its steel knuckles and packs a wallop on your overloaded cranium: at its heart, Darkman is a brutal, nasty, wickedly stealthy revenge flick.
Raimi keeps it moving blackly along, Cinematographer Bill Pope (who later did the camera-work for The Matrix trilogy) ensures that everything looks twistedly gorgeous along the way, and composer Danny Elfman makes sure the sountrack has the warp and woof and bump and grind the flick requires.
Everybody delivers on the acting, particularly Liam Neeson, bringing class and conviction to what would later become a breakout role, and expressing himself beneath all those bandages, meat, gore, blood and goop. Particularly good is the talented Larry Drake playing Durant, one of the greatest, down-to-business, no-bullsh*t-or-I'll-slaughter-ya criminal masterminds in cinematic history. Here is a guy who wastes no time, takes no prisoners; Durant wouldn't be caught dead leaving the hero alone, out of sight, with an inattentive guard. He'd just shoot him on the spot.
And Raimi uses Durant to make it absolutely clear what kind of flick Darkman is going to be from the start: Sam primes the pump, sets the stage in a charming little scene that, for my money, is one of the best ever. Before even the opening credits, Durant's gang has just annihilated a rival gang, which tried to ambush them in a warehouse under the pretense of talking over a 'deal'. A prisoner---a survivor, really, the only rival gangster not riddled with bullets from Durant's thugs---is hauled before Drake, who brandishes a cigar cutter, which he proceeds to slide over the man's index finger.
"Point One: I try not to let me anger get the better of me", he says, as he slices off the man's finger, the fingerbone making a jolly crisp snapping sound as counterpoint to Durant. "Point Two: I don't always succeed", he says, fitting and slicing another finger.
"And Point Three: I've got Seven more Points" he says, snipping the blade home a third time. Cue screams and opening titles---I mean, come on, how can you *not* like a flick---and a thug---like that? When I grow up, I wanna be Robert G. Durant.
Punisher take notes: this is how you serve up a tasty dish of Revenge. Lock, load, and set your watch for 99 minutes: nobody settles a score like Pizzaface---er, I mean Darkman.
JSG
Rating: 
Summary: The Pits
Review: I walked out of the theatre after about a half hour of this violent mess. I literally could not stomach such grossness. How anyone can stomach viewing the savage attack featured in this film is beyond me.
You want a good movie, that's also a one-word title ending with "man"? Go see the first "Superman" -- now that's a good movie.
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