ELEKTRA’s mission as a film was to be better than DAREDEVIL, the benighted Ben Affleck vehicle in which the character of the knife-wielding super-heroine previously appeared. It succeeds, but then again, it’s not like it had a high bar to clear.
Fans of Jennifer Garner will not be disappointed with ELEKTRA, which brings back that character from the dead with obvious hopes to launch a new franchise with it after debacle that was DAREDEVIL. The new film wastes no time in explaining Elektras resurrection and establishing her new incarnation as a killer-for-hire who wears form-fitting red outfits and whispers nasty nothings into her victims ear before skewering him or her with a triple-bladed dagger. Nor should it. At 97 minutes, it has a lot of ground to cover.
In an interesting move that should have worked better, the focus here is on Elektras inner life, one of childhood trauma, an adult penchant for arranging groceries and personal grooming products into neat quasi-military formations, and a complex relationship with her blind sensei (an urbane Terence Stamp), the one with the wry sense of humor who brought her back to life. Theres also that cleaning obsession, which she explains to her wisecracking agent as necessary to get rid of any DNA that she might leave behind, even in her own home. All in all, shes just as dead as she was before the sensei worked his zen magic.
That agent is worried about professional burn-out and even while advising her to get some rest and maybe get laid, he also brings her a new assignment, $2 million for a simple job, the only catch is she has to cool her heels in a stylish mansion on a lake for a few days before getting the names of her targets. While waiting, and fighting the tedium of nothing to do by doing one-armed pull-ups and having flashbacks from her childhood, she meets the neighbors, a nice-guy single father, Mark, (Goran Visinjic) and his difficult daughter, Abby (Kirsten Prout). In one of the oldest clichés going, they turn out to be the targets and Elektra discovers, to both her chagrin and surprise, that she just cant bring herself to do them in. Instead, she turns protector, fighting against the demons that come after them, and against those annoying maternal feelings that spring up in her about Abby, who, after taking a gander at Elektra at work, wants to be just like her.
Garner rises above the stretchiness of the script, handling with equal agility the action sequences, sleek and lethal with long hair blowing around her head like a medusa, as well as Elektras unwilling emotional growth, underplaying the inner conflict with the same sort of resolve her character uses in battle. Those battles are elegantly staged rather than heart-stopping, echoing, like the atmospheric art direction, the graphic nature of the storys comic book origins. If the slo-mo is overused, there are some nice CGI effects that include tattoos that come to life with a vengeance. There is also a piquant tweak on gender roles, with Elektra never less than in control, and Mark following her lead in the classic chick role of needing to be saved. That Visinjic is deeply hunky only adds to the delectation.
The people behind ELEKTRA seem to have been mostly interested in the visual impact their flick would have than it what it had to say. What might have been a solid popcorn flick about the classic fantasy elements of good and evil, redemption and forgiveness, is reduced to one that barely skirts schlock.
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