Darc movie review: By-the-book revenge flick that uses frenetic editing to make up for lack of drama

Netflix frequenters must remember the Jared Leto-starrer _The Outsider_ that released earlier this year. It raised more than a few eyebrows because of its alleged cultural appropriation. It charted Leto’s gradual rise through the ranks of the Yakuza, Japan’s much mythologised organised crime syndicate. But its gravest crime was its shallow narrative, which the filmmakers tried to hide beneath the lustre and grime of the city streets. Darc, the new Netflix release, replaces Leto with an unknown face, throws a cartload of action sequences into the mix and comes up with a by-the-book tale of revenge littered with corpses that uses frenetic editing to make up for its lack of drama. Darc is the story of a comic book obsessed kid who witnesses his mother’s murder at the hands of a Yakuza boss. An Interpol cop bails him out of prison so he can help rescue his daughter who’s been kidnapped by the same Yakuza family. The kid has now grown into Darc, a name he takes after his favourite comic book hero. Our protagonist is the silent, brooding type, one among hundreds proliferating in this genre, and seems indestructible. Everyone, including, of course, the women and the director himself, recognise this immediately and ensure that he makes his way into the crime family as smoothly as a knife through butter. There’s the black sheep of the family who relies on him to prove a point to his father, in effect clearing the way for Darc to achieve his ultimate aim, and  following it up with a mildly tragic end. [caption id=“attachment_4455399” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Still from Darc. Image courtesy Netflix[/caption] So far, so average. Only, Darc is white, and so are a lot of players in this film, including rivals who resemble biker gang cutouts, the strippers and the cops. Puerile references are made at intervals to Japanese-Chinese rivalries, drug businesses and all the other shady dealing that goes on under the garb of honest business work. One gets the impression that the director was under the spell of all the stereotypes that define the genre while he worked on the film. That, or he chose to focus on plodding through the narrative interludes that led to the fighting set-pieces that truly are the saviours and the highlight of the film. For the action is decently choreographed and, if it weren’t surrounded by cardboard characters on all sides, could well have made for an interesting film. The central performance appears too heavily reliant on the actor’s imposing physical frame to ever engage the viewer emotionally. For someone with such a tragic, if predictable, background story, eliciting empathy from the audience shouldn’t have been as much of a task as director Juilus Nasso turns it into. Darc has a soft spot for women. Unfortunately, the ones around him are made to mouth dialogue right out of a screenwriter’s handbook, and, as usual, it is all about him. The older actors in the film turn in stronger, more assured performances, therefore rescuing it from being a complete dramatic washout. That must owe to their acting acumen, for the director is content with hitting the panic editing mode while shooting simple conversations. His film’s frames are dripping with a mashup of city lights and colour, convulsing female bodies and buckets of blood in a bid to airbrush the dramatic deficiencies of the story. Despite all its flaws, Darc is never too boring. Nasso, by sticking to the formula as devotedly as possible, and the slick action sequences, manages to maintain the watchability of his film. That, perhaps, is the central flaw of the film: a complete lack of ambition. Darc never seems like a low budget production. So a few risks taken here and there in the narrative could have really made this a way more engaging and substantial film. A cliché is a cliché because it holds. It certainly ensures that you keep watching Darc, secretly hoping that a surprise or two is lurking right around the corner. By the time the end credits begin rolling and you start scrolling through the list of other titles available for viewing, one-more-strictly-formulaic-film-older now, the implications of a seemingly reliable online streaming platform slowly dawn on you. Darc is currently streaming on Netflix. watch the trailer here: