Sam Raimi (“Army Of Darkness”, “Spider-Man”) directs the fun superhero flick “Darkman”. This is a competent yet still somewhat flawed film. You can tell that this film was the bridge between Raimi’s “Evil Dead” pictures and “Spider-Man”.

Liam Neeson (“Batman Begins”, “Taken”) stars as a brilliant scientist by the name of Peyton Westlake, who is working on developing synthetic skin. After his girlfriend (Frances McDormand “Fargo”) discovers a memo revealing corruption, the men responsible want the evidence back and Peyton is left for dead by gangsters. After a surgical procedure to cut the connection between his receptors and his brain, Peyton has increased strength and he sets out to get revenge on the men that burned him alive.

Liam Neeson does a good job as Peyton. The guy is a smart scientist that becomes a disfigured as a monster from a horror movie. Using his synthetic skin, Peyton is able to create masks to help him fight the bad guys and to return to his girlfriend but there’s a catch, the synthetic skin only last for 99 minutes. Frances McDormand is rather irritating as the love interest. The villains in this film were really disappointing as they’re just standard gangsters, which is a real shame because superheroes really need supervillains to fight. As usual for a Sam Raimi picture, both Ted Raimi and Bruce Campbell appear but you really will have to pay a close attention if you want to see Campbell.

“Darkman” has some impressive visual scenes, the character of Peyton is very interesting with Neeson providing a fittingly tragic performance and some of the action scenes are really quite impressive. As the film nears the end, there was a clever sequence involving a helicopter as our hero dangles below, dodging traffic. “Darkman” does have its problems as it doesn’t provide any memorable enemies and Frances McDormand is very weak here. If you feel you’ve seen enough of the “Batman” movies then maybe “Darkman” will provide a nice alternative.