This is by far and away the best comic book adaptation since 1989s Batman.

The beauty of Daredevil is that it truly develops the main protagonist to his full potential. In this development we are given a hero grounded in reality, not just by his character but also by his vulnerability. This is the most important aspect of Daredevil: he is just a human who bleeds and feels pain like the rest of us.

As the opening credits roll, the movie opens to a dark rainy Manhattan night. Our hero is perched on top of a huge gothic cathedral and helicopters scour the skyline. From here he lowers himself into the cathedral, dropping painfully the final five-foot. We gaze into his glazed eyes and his blindness betrays his story as we are transported back to his childhood.

It is in this flashback that we learn how Daredevil was born in young Matt. The freak chemical accident which robbed him of his sight grants his other four senses super-human ability. When we first experience how he uses this to ëseeí the world, we are gifted a stunning visual effect from the director. Mattís sonar vision is the central premise of how it is possible for him to do the things he does.

Daredevil breezily skips through a short montage of Matt training himself to become an amazingly skilled acrobat and fighter. From here the story is relatively simple. After we see his father murdered, we slide forward in time to meet grown up Matt (Ben Affleck), who has devoted his life to the pursuit of justice - lawyer by day and vengeful vigilante by night. It is this dynamic that director Mark Steven Johnson relishes in his portrait of the character. Matt believes "justice is blind" and he is its purveyor. Daredevil dispenses his own brand of justice and it is disturbingly un-superhero-like in the beginning.

The dichotomy of the plotline is that once Daredevil takes off his suit, we are returned back to a unfulfilled and disabled Matt. His priest reminds him, "A man without fear is a man without hope." His confusion begins to climax when he meets Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner) - this is a slightly bizarre scene, but just roll with it. As Matt realises he is falling in love with Elektra, a boy witnesses his thug father receiving a beating from Daredevil, who wants to believe that he is "not the bad guy," despite too much blood on his hands.

This is the essence of Johnson's exploration of Daredevil. His humanity is tested to the backdrop of his search for the crime overlord Kingpin (Michael Clark Duncan). Kingpin hires an Irish assassin, called Bullseye (Colin Farrell), to kill Elektra and her father and Bullseye takes it upon himself to kill Daredevil. Through the passage of this story, Daredevil must discover whether he is better than the vengeance that has fuelled his life until now.

Daredevilís characters fill the film with colour. Farrell is superbly enjoyable and eccentric and Clarke suitably menacing. These people, as well as John Favreau, as Mattís lawyer partner, provide an underlining pattern of quality humour throughout the film. Garner does the job as the love interest that helps liberate Daredevil into the hero he is.

Johnson and Affleck - two childhood Daredevil fans - have created a well-rounded, exciting and supremely satisfying superhero flick