Darkman (1990)

"I'm everyone - and no one. Everywhere - nowhere. Call me... Darkman!"
Thanks to his groundbreaking work on synthetic skin, Dr. Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) is closing in on a lifelong dream, which is to find a permanent cure in order to help out patients who is suffering with severe burn wounds.
But his latest victory is to be cut short when the ruthless crime lord Robert G. Durant (Larry Drake) and his gang decides to drop by for an unannounced visit, as they immediately go to work, leaving Dr. Westlake and his dreams to be blown to pieces.
Miraculously, Peyton ends up surviving the lethal "accident", but it does not make up for the gruesome fact, that most of his body is now beyond recognition. However, fate seem to have a certain cruel way of even the odds out, as crime is finally about to meet their match, and his name is Darkman!

As a kid back in the 90s, I always got this one mixed up with The Shadow (1994) and along with my friends, we used to think that The Shadow was a rip-off of Sam Riami's 1990 picture, but later on we learned that it was the other way around, as Raimi wanted to make a superhero movie based on the comics from the 1930s-40s, and tried to get the rights to make his version of The Shadow.
But when that did not happen, he went on and instead created his very own "superhero", Darkman.

The film was released in a time where Superman had already faded away with thanks to the "help" of some very poor sequels and while Batman had only a year earlier set a whole new standard for the superhero genre, which saw Tim Burton bringing along a dark and unsettling tone, and very few came close of recapturing the same quality and style.
And while Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Robocop 2 (both released in 1990), has stood out in a good way (at least so I think) my pick for the best or most enjoyable superhero film of 1990s (beside any of the Batman films, including the animated ones), would have to be Sam Riami's Darkman.

It really is quite an effort from Raimi who a decade later on would hit big with his terrible monster budget, Spider-Man trilogy, (I cannot help it, I truly hated it then and was very disappointed when I saw names like Sam Raimi, Danny Elfman, Willem Dafoe and even the great Bruce Campbell being attatched to these turds) and if only he had gotten the same kind of big budget money and instead used it on a trilogy for his Darkman adventure.
Now that would have or could have been truly awesome.
Instead I ended up watching him throw it all away on a series of CGI dominated adventures starring one of the whimpiest and most annoying superheroes ever, thanks to the "talent" that is Tobey Maguire, and this time not even Kirsten Dunst and her great uhm "talents" could save it. I tried getting through one of them last year, and it went into the garbage after 30 minutes or less, horrible movies, everyone of them.

Anyway, Darkman or Dr. Peyton Westlake is my kind of "superhero".
Instead of yet another 3 hour CGI dominated movie with some douchy, full of himself (cracking one-liners every other second) filthy rich hero, we end up with a rather tragic figure, who has lost everything while being "blessed" with, well (not super-powers though) but new skills along with a brilliant mind, in which he uses to overwhelm his enemies, but still he is very far away of coming off as another indestructible force, taking down 50 bad guys with no problem.
Darkman however, is often clumsy, and very lucky, and even if he manages to save the day and the girl, he still is as the "nice" yuppie businessman Louis Strack Jr. puts it:"You truly are one ugly son of a bitch!"

I love how we see Peyton throughout the film, always fighting with his inner demons, and even if it seems a bit "silly" or cheesy at times, I like the over-the-top almost Phantom of the Opera tone that Sam Raimi seem to be going after. 
Peyton's meltdowns are both incredible funny yet also tragic, and Raimi seem to get the best out of both worlds, and while a certain Elephant scene might be one of the films most famous scenes, I have alway felt the part where Peyton goes completely berserk, all alone in his lab, is one of the best scenes in Darkman.
As Liam Neeson did one hell of a job, and even now I still have a little hope that he will eventually ditch the endless run of decent but not really that very memorable action-thrillers, and once again team up with Raimi to take on the part as Dr. Peyton Westlake.