Posted: 01/28/2005

Elektra

(2005)

by Hank Yuloff

She looks good, but this movie is not.

Any time you have to bring a character back to life in order to use them in a movie, there are a certain amount of issues that are attendant. Plot complications and story lines immediately are brought into question and the director has a long way to go right from the start.

Such was the case in the Star Trek series, Terminator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and its done again with Elektra… who we left for dead at the end of Daredevil. But the pressures of Hollywood, the popularity of Jennifer Garner, and the comic book crowd have all come together to bring her back from the other side to star in another movie. Since director Rob Bowman was in charge of 33 episodes of The X Files, I guess such plot complications are pretty natural, but I found it just a bit old.

In Elektra, Garner is brought back and since we need a box office angle, this time she starts out on the wrong side of the Force (yea, mixed story line, but as I said, they have a long way to go to get me to buy into the story) as a paid assassin. Her mission is to kill a man, (Mark Miller played by Goran Visnjic), for something his grandfather did years earlier (For some reason, it made me think of the Mike Tyson quote “I want to eat his children.”)

Elektra, however falls in love with her target—which is not altogether hard to believe since almost every woman on ER has fallen for Visnjic’s Dr. Kovac character—and thus begins her journey back to the good side. Do you want to bet she makes it? Didn’t think they would kill her in two movies in a row, did you?

The stunts performed by Garner (Alias), are quite wonderful and for the popcorn entertainment you can get from a comic book movie, Elektra is not bad, but I think you can wait for it to be on cable and pop your own corn in the microwave. It’s kind of a pity that Elektra could not use the mystical power of kimagure (limited ability to see the future) and avoid making this one.

Hank Yuloff is our senior staff reviewer in Los Angeles.

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