Another Marvel comic brought to the big screen and another failure in my opinion. Elektra is the spin-off of 2003's Daredevil and follows Elektra (Jennifer Garner) after being brought back from the dead. She now works as a hired assassin with obvious emotional problems throughout the movie due to bad childhood memories. Elektra is soon hired to kill a man and his daughter on a scenic remote island, but her maternal emotions kick in and she can't go through with it as she sees so much of herself in the girl, Abby. She soon finds out that this young girl is of great importance to The Order of The Hand, an evil group of supernatural warriors.
Now that plot may seem exciting to you, but really there is little exciting or interesting about this plot. The highlight of the film, at least for the guys, is watching Jennifer Garner prance around. There are so many holes in this plot that it just makes the whole story crap. If you saw Daredevil you would have noticed she didn't seem to have any of these emotional issues before. Furthermore when you watch Elektra they don't even mention any of her past involving Daredevil. You would think they would somehow tie the movies together besides just her name.
The movie is poorly directed, poorly portrayed by the actors and just overall poorly executed. Even the characters have stupid names. I guess they might have had these names in the comic? But seriously their lame. There is this large member of The Order of the Hand who has rock hard skin and his name is Stone and there is a guy with tattoos of animals which can come to life and his name is Tattoo (shocking I know).
Even the fight scenes left me wanting more. They were all pretty quick and tried to use all these special effects like The Matrix slow-mo moves. Even when Elektra is in the fight with the main villain in the movie the fight - it's pathetic. The whole time Elektra is losing and it's pretty obvious he could have finished her off at any point he wanted, but instead in a split instant she just stabs him in the chest. The whole movie she wasn't able to make a scratch on him, but for some reason she could just stab him in the chest at the end of the movie.
Hmmm, what was good about the movie??? Did I mention Jennifer Garner prances around in semi-skimpy clothing? Well that's about as good as it gets. It started off decent and I thought 'hey, this might be alright' but it quickly turned to what I affectionately call 'crap'. Jennifer Garner was contractually obligated to do this movie because she signed on when she signed on for Daredevil and I feel bad for her having to go through this. Unless you truly love Marvel comics and the Elektra comic series, do yourself a favor and rent something else. Elektra gets a generous 3 out 10.
"Elektra" opens January 14, 2005 and is rated PG13. Action, Comic Book. Directed by Rob Bowman. Written by Mark Steven Johnson. Starring Goran Visnjic, Jennifer Garner, Terence Stamp.
