Written by Mr. Mouseburger 9th Mar 2006
Kindly submitted by Kooshmeister
Robert G. Durant is a ruthless, sadistic mob boss who often does "special favours" for corrupt businessman Louis Strack Jr., including torturing and murdering Strack's enemies. When not brutally killing innocent people, Durant enjoys staying at home with his pet rabbit and his collection of severed human fingers.
Towards the end of the film, Strack has ordered Durant to hunt down and kill Darkman, formerly Dr. Peyton Westlake. Durant does so by coming after Darkman in a helicopter that also contains a few other minions.
Darkman actually manages to get aboard the helicopter, but Durant kicks him out, and as he falls, the vigilante grabs hold of a hook and cable that just happens to be attached to the bottom of the helicopter. Durant, nonplussed, tells the pilot, "Shake 'im!"
The pilot complies, flying wildly through the city, but he is unable to shake Darkman loose. After disposing of an annoying police helicopter with a grenade launcher, Durant comes up with a new plan to get rid of Darkman, telling the pilot, "Dip 'im!" The pilot then proceeds to dip Darkman into traffic in an effort to get him run over. This ends up proving fatal - not for Darkman - but rather for Durant. Darkman ends up on top of a semi-truck, and just as the truck drives into a tunnel, Darkman attaches the hook on the end of the cable to it, causing the helicopter to be dragged uncontrollably along with the truck towards the tunnel.
Durant's eyes widen in terror as he realizes what is about to happen. Because Mission: Impossible, whose climactic action sequence showed that helicopters and tunnels could indeed coexist, was still several years away, Durant's pilot is unable to think of anything to do but die. Durant's final utterance is a defiant "No!" and then the helicopter slams into the wall above the tunnel entrance, exploding. Darkman, still riding on the top of the truck as it drives through the tunnel, looks back at he flaming wreckage and yells, "Burn in hell!"
He is for all intents and purposes dead at this point, but we have added "Cheating death" here because, Durant implausibly returns in Darkman II: The Return of Durant
Looking at this death, I thought there was no way Durant was getting back up from that crash. I mean, getting blown up in a helicopter is usually pretty fatal.
Then I saw this: [www.imdb.com]
How getting blown up only sent him into a coma rather than into a crate of dog food is beyond me.
There is a tiny typo at the the very end - point.
> typo
Thanks, Mouse's skills are in watching DVDs and "stream of conciousness writing" - he leaves proof-reading to us lesser minions!
OB
I was looking at this page to find out how Durant supposedly dies at the end of the first film, in whose final scene he appears, i.e. he actually cheats death during the first film, not just between the first and second in the series. He appears in the unfinished-skyscraper scene, but I can't remember what happens to him.
That's Darkman disguised as Durant. As far as the first film is concerned Durant dies in the crash; Darkman then disguises himself as Durant in order to fool Strack and rescue Julie, but Strack figures out it's not Durant and unmasks him.
Could we have a link to Jim Phelps there?