Elektra

Superzero: Elektra flops like a wet cape

By Anthony Del Valle

Elektra has enough right elements to make for a satisfyingly dumb good time, so it's surprising how spectacularly director Rob Bomwan's take on the Marvel character fails.

The script (by Zak Penn, Stuart Zicherman and Raven Metzner), inspired by Elektra's appearance in the 2003 film Daredevil, gives us a paid assassin (Jennifer Garner) who looks back on her life with a despair that would make Samuel Beckett proud. She's instructed to move into an isolated lakeside home while awaiting her next assignment, and becomes friendly (reluctantly) with the hunk next door (Gorsan Visnjic) and his 12-year-old daughter (Kristen Prout). Wouldn't you know it, her next assigned victim winds up being the hunk and the daughter. Who the intended victims really are and whether Elektra can help them is the film's crux.

It wouldn't take much to make this work. But there are too many basic mistakes. Elektra's enemies are an intriguing mix of mystics and martial arts experts and eagles and snakeflies, yet their power, which seems overwhelming at times, is so easily defused that you wonder what anyone was worried about. Elektra spends a lot of time thinking about her unhappy past but the only hint we get of a connection between then and now is that her father was demanding and forced her to swim when she didn't want to. The super-abilities of her blind martial arts teacher (Terrence Stamp) are inconsistent. The fight sequences are lame. And a climactic battle that Elektra and an ill-defined villain agree will be "just you and me" is so inconsequential the film doesn't even have a final punch. (And Elektra cheats. She enlists someone else's aid during the fight and the filmmakers don't seem to notice.)

Still, Elektra manages to keep most of her body succulent and in view during most of the killings, and few scenes are longer than 30 seconds, so boys may find this the perfect video game.