...a pointless, muddled mass of sentiment and clichés that elicits mainly yawns.
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Obviously, 2004 and 2005 were banner years for female superhero flops. First, there was Halle Berry's "Catwoman"; then there was Jennifer Garner's "Elecktra," both released within about six months of each other.
Interestingly, both films took in at the box office about half of what they cost to make, although "Catwoman" was twice as expensive as "Elektra." I have no idea why "Catwoman" cost so much more, about $85,000,000 to "Elektra's" $43,000,000, because neither film has particularly impressive visuals. Maybe Halle Berry's salary and Sharon Stone's were considerably higher than Jennifer Garner's, or "Catwoman" had more location shooting. Overhead these days; it'll kill ya.
Anyway, I am not one of those people who subscribes to the notion that both films failed, with critics and the public, because they were male-hating, women's lib pictures. That's the kind of nonsense talked up by a relative few insecure, possibly paranoid men. The films failed simply because they weren't very good. Like so much that is made in Hollywood these days, they were products created by a misguided notion that movie audiences want a maximum number of fights, chases, quick edits, loud noises, and deaths, with a minimum of plot, characterization, and heart. Yet if you look at the two superhero films that fared best in 2004, they were "Spider-Man 2" and "Hellboy," two movies with, yes, plot, characterization, and, above all, heart.
Not that "Catwoman" didn't attempt to inject at least a modicum of warmth into its story, but "Elektra" tries only a few such diversions. Its character simply takes up where she left off in "Daredevil," no matter that she was supposed to have died in that movie.
"Elektra" begins with an offscreen narrator, presumably Elektra's wise, old, blind mentor, Stick (Terrence Stamp), telling us that the story we are about to see concerns the forces of good and evil. "The evil," he says, "has taken many forms and used the darkest arts. In our time, they call themselves simply 'The Hand.' The good follow the way of Kimaguri. Its Masters can see the future and perhaps even bring back the dead." Thus was Elektra brought back from the dead to fight evil, although we're also told that both sides seek her out as "a weapon in an ancient war." In other words, she kind of gets thrown around from one side to the other.
But she's surely in demand. So in demand that she has her own agent. I kid you not. Her business representative, McCabe (Colin Cunningham), arranges assignments to keep her occupied. Apparently, Elektra gets bored really fast unless she's killing somebody, and she is an amazingly efficient killing machine. In fact, she seems to enjoy her work immensely and explains to McCabe that the more people she kills, the better it is for her image, her mystique. "You know," says one of the baddies at the beginning of the movie, "the better the assassin, the closer they can get to you before you know they're there." Elektra moves like a ghost.
Elektra doesn't have any superhuman abilities, but she's agile and deadly and very, very quick. She has been taught the art of anticipating her opponent's every move, so she can maneuver from one place to another, be somewhere else, in the blink of an eye. That comes in handy pretty often.
But before the actual plot kicks in, we get a good deal of deadly dull back story, flashbacks and nightmares about Elektra's past. None of which includes even the barest mention of Daredevil, I might add. You'd think that Matt Murdock never existed in her life, despite her supposed love for the poor fellow and to say nothing of her penchant for blind guys.
So, about a third of the way into the movie the actual story line finally develops. Elektra is assigned to kill a neighbor of hers, a man named Mark Miller (Goran Visnjic), and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Abby (Kirsten Proust). Naturally, Elektra can't do it and decides to protect them instead. But why and from whom or from what are the questions.
Meanwhile, "The Hand" is trying to find something they refer to cryptically only as the "Treasure," which is somehow connected to the father and daughter. "The Hand's" Master, Roshi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), agrees to let his son, Kirigi (Will Yun Lee), attempt to find the "Treasure" when all else fails. Kirigi heads up a task force that consists of various folks called Typhoid, Kinkou, Tattoo, and Stone, a formidable crew to say the least. Too bad they don't live up to the toughness of their names because when the time comes to wind things up, Elektra makes relatively easy work of them.
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[release]15874[/release]