A blind lawyer loses in court during the day and wins in the street at night, in a city that has already decided which of those it prefers.
Matt Murdock is blinded as a child, in 1982, by radioactive waste that leaves every other sense sharpened past human range, and the film’s best sequences are the ones that try to show what that is actually like. His day job is a legal practice that mostly loses. His night job is the reason the losses are bearable.
It was made when the modern run of comic book films was still finding its feet, between the first X-Men and the first Iron Man, and it carries the marks of that period: a hard-rock soundtrack, a leather costume, and a certainty that darkness is the same thing as maturity.
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A director’s cut was released in 2004, rated R, restoring roughly thirty minutes including a subplot that changes the shape of the film considerably. This catalogue records the theatrical running time, which is what the reference infobox states.
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Facts last checked on Sep 7, 2026
Released: February 14, 2003