Elektra (DVD) > Reviews > Less than Electrifying

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Indifferent to it
Story	Very ordinary
Characters / Performances	Satisfactory
Special Effects	Standard
Soundtrack	Average

Advantages:	Some nice effects and a couple of decent fights
Disadvantages:	The shoddy script and sub - par performances

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Having been left for dead at the end of “Daredevil”, Elektra is resurrected and taught the way of the Kimaguri by mentor Stick. But unable to stick to the rules, she is dismissed from his school and goes to work as a freelance assassin. The problems begin when she is sent to kill a father and daughter, only to fall for her mark…

Director Rob Bowman returns after the commercial disappointment of “Reign of Fire” with this spin-off of the Marvel franchise. Unfortunately, he has learnt little from the shortcomings of his last movie and is destined to repeat the same mistakes; namely too many characters, not enough characterisation and too many plot holes. I was expecting good things from this film; Elektra was the most interesting character in “Daredevil” and Jennifer Garner has proved engaging in “Alias” and “13 Going on 30”. The director has made some strange assumptions about his audience; thinking that everyone viewing the film must have already seen “Daredevil” and therefore have some foreknowledge of the character. In fact he seems to have made a film strictly for the fanboys, as he introduces so many poorly sketched characters that have presumably been lifted from the comic books without giving them any back-story or decent motivation. For instance, one villain is introduced, involved in two gags and crushed by a tree before we can see what he can really do. The shadowy Japanese organisation of “The Hand”, though purposely enigmatic, is so briefly introduced that its importance is never addressed. Nor is the habit of disappearing in a puff of green smoke when a baddie is killed. Some aspects of the film are pure comic book, including the animated introduction that features black and red line drawings to tell the story of “The Treasure”, a female warrior whose powers can be harnessed for good or evil. Similarly the tradition of dressing the good guys in white and the bad guys in black rears its head in the face-off between two groups of ninjas.

This feels like a big-budget debut, though Bowman cut his teeth on “Reign of Fire”. It’s the decision to use every clichéd trick in the book that reeks of inexperience; whether it’s using flashbacks to childhood that are always in soft-focus, flash-forwards in weird colours that are then replayed in normal hues to signal Elektra’s gift of foresight, the use of dream sequences, eerily coloured, fast-moving skies that foreshadow the approach of something wicked or the decision to show most of Elektra’s opening rampage through short edits and CCTV footage. It’s so unoriginal as to be laughable on occasion. Until you realise you’ve paid good money to see this kind of television quality trickery. And the Canadian locations don’t help the made-for-TV vibe either.

The screenplay feels like it has been pieced together by a couple of over-zealous fifteen year-olds that read a lot of comics. You can practically see them thumbing through their back issues to excise their favourite scenes before stitching them together clumsily (right we’re going to start with her breaking into a kingpin’s heavily guarded lair and she needs to be wearing a really tight costume... And we need some cool bad guys with really hard-sounding names…And one of them should be a really sexy girl...). Okay the dialogue is nowhere near as bad as it was in “The Punisher” (though lines like “You gave me my life back…” and the response “You gave me mine.” may have you retching in your popcorn), but a lack of exposition will leave you scratching your head.

Jennifer Garner’s career is currently in the ascendant, but her performance in “Elektra” won’t help her to get into the top echelon of Hollywood. Bowman has failed to capitalise on her potential, with the character vacillating between cold-hearted killer and doe-eyed would-be mother. Though very athletic in her fight scenes, she is at her best in softer moments that allow her charm to shine through. Sadly these are few and far between. She is hampered by an absence of chemistry with love interest Goran Visnjic and a lack of warmth with Kirsten Prout, who plays Abby.

Terence Stamp was obviously lured into playing Elektra’s mentor Stick by a large pay-packet. I can’t see what else would have attracted him to the part. It is one of those clichéd authoritarian father figure roles that he could play with his eyes closed. And he does, presumably thinking about the zeroes on his cheque as he sleepwalks his way through the blind warrior schtick. But then I suppose any character named Stick was bound to be a bit wooden.

Goran Visnjic trundles through his doting father role, seemingly at a loss as to what to do with the hastily drawn character. The script doesn’t afford him a back-story or any function other than to shift the girl from one place to another. Ah yes, the girl. Kirsten Prout tries her best with a role that is determinedly and (thanks to the trailer) pointlessly opaque. She has a few moments in which she shows real spark, but it’s hard to take the character seriously when her main weapon is a glow-in-the-dark bracelet and she goes from saying she’s too young for intensive training to taking on the bad guys almost single-handed.

The bad guys look cool but have very little to do. They are all distinctive-looking individuals that mainly stand around trying to look menacing. Only Will Yun Lee has any dialogue (if you’ll pardon the pun) to speak of and it’s of such disappointing calibre that I can’t remember a word. He fares well enough in his climactic fight with Elektra though it relies too heavily on CGI to be believable. However, more character development and a sense of purpose would have made for a more interesting relationship. Of the remaining villains, Natassia Malthe stands out as Typhoid, who causes everything she touches to shrivel and die. She is a striking woman who makes the most of her looks and lack of clothing to draw attention. Chris Ackerman draws the eye as the aptly named Tattoo. Although it must be said it’s more his morphing tattoos than his acting that make him watchable.

The special effects are of variable quality. The wire work during the stunt sequences is surprisingly subtle and Tattoo’s, well, tattoos don’t look as bad as they might have done. It’s nice to see the effects bods thought about it enough to add touches like his eagle tattoo tearing at his skin to get back into his body. The big disappointments are the way his wolf tattoos behave once they are free of him, zooming off in a cloud of green fire that looks like it’s been borrowed from Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead”. The bursts of green smoke that accompany the deaths of each bad guy would be more at home in a magic act than on the big screen. The effects that accompany Typhoid’s path of destruction are well-accomplished whether making plants wilt, people desiccate or chains rust.

The fight scenes are smoothly choreographed and show a sense of invention, though there are not enough for a film in which the lead is supposed to be a martial arts expert. The best is an attack on a remote cabin by two ninjas that involves Elektra’s trademark sais, throwing stars and a crossbow crossed with a revolver. The final conflict is somewhat disappointing, mainly because of the frenetic cutting that, though intended to convey excitement, merely makes me wonder how many takes they needed to accomplish all the moves.

Jennifer Garner is lumbered with a parade of absurd costumes that may look cool in a comic, but are ridiculous in real life. Her signature costume is a red satin bustier accompanied by spray-on red leather trousers that seem difficult to walk in, let alone fight. The costume designer seems obsessed with adding pointless buckles to most of her outfits, giving her bizarre dungaree pyjamas that must hurt like hell if you roll over on them in the night. All of her outfits are accompanied by ludicrously high heels that give her the most absurd hip wiggle since Bugs Bunny first dressed in drag.

The soundtrack is unsurprisingly rock-oriented but thankfully the full-on soft rock ballad is kept until the end credits. The score attempts to push your emotional buttons by using the harp and plenty of warm brass to create warmth and sharp strings in the supposedly tense moments. Unfortunately it’s too little too late.

Overall this feels like a shoestring production hastily cobbled together during one of Garner’s breaks from filming “Alias”. Presumably the series is very tiring from the lacklustre performance she puts in. It’s not a bad film but it isn’t a good one either. It feels as if the screenplay has been pruned excessively to fit the hour-and-a-half running time, discarding plots and subplots willy-nilly for the sake of brevity. Similarly the lack of excitement can be attributed to not knowing enough about the characters to care about what happens to them. Sadly this makes for a far less engaging film than it could have been. The dialogue is below par, the action sequences too few and the performances phoned-in. See it by all means, but don’t expect to remember it for more than a few minutes after you’ve left the cinema. In a movie survival of the fittest, this film is destined to be eaten alive by the likes of the “Spider-Man” and “X-Men” franchises.