Darkman III: Die Darkman Die (1996)

Well Deserved Praise

Purely Joyful Movie!

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Darkman, needing money to continue his experiments on synthetic skin, steals a crate of cash from drug lord Peter Rooker, attracting the gangster's attention. Darkman III: Die Darkman Die is the 2nd sequel to the original 1990 Darkman and once again we see the return of Arnold Vosloo as the title character and perhaps except him the film doesn't offer anything else except alot of boring and how explosions, some action here and there and a stupid plot about synthetic skin that takes like forever to be made. The first Darkman for it's time was very well made but the sequels are just stupid especially this one. (4/10)

Nothing amazing here. This trilogy went very evenly downhill after the first. There was a distinct lack of anything new. There were some good sets but we have seen them all before. It felt like whole scenes were lifted from the first and especially second film. Overall uninspiring and unimaginative sequel. The weakest in the series suffers because it clones the second and not the first.

Within the first 17 minutes of director Bradford May's "Darkman III: Die Darkman Die", we have already been subjected to a silly recap and accompanying voice-over on the first two films, hilarious over-acting, about three minutes of footage simply ripped from the second film and re-edited slightly to seem like new footage, and a lengthy advertisement the scarred and tormented title character watches about Universal Theme Parks- Universal being the company that distributed this film. Yes, "Darkman III: Die Darkman Die" is quite the handful when it comes to cheap cash-ins on the success of a previous film.This time around, the disfigured anti-hero Peyton Westlake (aka, "Darkman"; portrayed by "Mummy" actor Arnold Vosloo) locks horns with evil crime-lord and lousy husband Peter Rooker (played in a brilliantly over-the-top performance by Jeff Fahey), and over the course of the 87 minute film grows to develop an affection for Rooker's wife and daughter, once again learning to care for another person.Blah. Blah. Blah.This film is basically just a silly way for the studio to make some more money off of Sam Raimi's original film, which I consider to be a great action-suspense film.Oh yeah, and there are also a number of silly sub-plots, including a villainess who supposedly was one of the original doctors to save Darkman following his scarring, and her seducing our hero into thinking she is an ally before revealing her nefarious plot to help Rooker create more super-human powered thugs like Darkman. Apparently, she can't just do the same procedure on the thugs that she performed on Darkman. Why? I can't really explain it, because the movie certainly doesn't.There's also an assassination sub-plot involving a District Attourney who is threatening to bring down Rooker's organization, and some other very silly things going on.But it doesn't really add up. This film feels like two or three episodes of a television show edited together more than an actual film. The direction alternates between pretty good and downright sloppy (a scene where Darkman rides his train-like vehicle and dodges a rocket-launcher is just plain silly), and the editing is a mixed-bag. The film just moves too quickly for anyone to really care what's going on. And without spoiling it, the final 15 minutes of this movie, and indeed, the entire series is just kinda... I dunno... Another 15 minutes of mixed-bag footage.In fact, commenting on the editing, one of my favorite things in this film is watching for footage re-used from the previous films, and then looking for footage within this film that is repeated multiple times. Yes, it's that cheap. It's one thing to do a re-cap at the beginning of the film, and maybe repeat a shot or two, but in the sheer volume they do it (minutes of footage repeated from previous films), it's just sloppy and amateurish.Also, I have to say that Darkman's psychedelic montage freak-outs are a bit overdone in this film. They are so stylized and overdone that they do work, but only in light doses and in proper context, as Raimi did in the original film. Here, there are at least four or five, and they feel very abrupt and out-of-place.That being said, the film is not without some good points. A few action scenes are well-done. The cliché story of Darkman yearning for a real life works suitably for a direct-to-DVD feature. Some of the acting is nice, particularly from Rooker's wife, portrayed by the beautiful Roxann Dawson. Also, while no Danny Elfman, composer Randy Miller composes some nice music that builds off of Elfman's original themes.But overall, the film is too quick, cheap and silly to be taken seriously. Arnold Vosloo seems alternatively bored and exuberant from scene to scene, and Fahey, while a joy to watch as an over-the-top villain, just doesn't quite fit in with the series.Like "Darkman II", I would recommend this to fans of the original, who will surely get a laugh. Otherwise, you need not apply. A four out of ten.

I watched the final Darkman movie last night and was entertained but I was also left wanting a lot more. I was very disappointed in the ending and I think it was a bad move on the writer's part, I won't go too into it to keep this review from getting a spoiler warning. The truth is, I had fun with this film, but was very let down.I, once again, liked Arnold Vosloo's performance but the rest were mediocre at best, but mostly poor. The story is alright, but like I said, the ending really made me angry. It had pretty good special effects like the other films, but that's the only thing that was good about this one. Everything else was average.See this movie if you liked the first two films but don't expect anything amazing.