Elektra (2005)

We continue our look at comic book movies with Elektra, the 2005 spin-off/sequel to the Ben Affleck Daredevil film. I never saw this one when it came out in the theaters, and only saw it recently when I got it from Netflix for this review. It looked bad, and from what everyone told me it was bad, so I didn't have high expectations. When the imdb box office numbers suggest they may have barely made their money back by selling the TV rights to FX, it doesn't give one much hope.

Elektra takes place some time after Daredevil. Garner reprises her role as the heroine, who is now working as an assassin. When she's hired to kill the dude next door and his daughter, she decides not to and protects them instead. They're being chased by The Hand, an evil order of ninjas headed by Cary Tagawa. His son and four of his friends with special powers work to track her down, and she has to summon all her strength if she hopes to win.



All right, so this was bad, but not as bad as I expected. Something about it didn't feel right though. The story didn't lend itself to a big budget actioner, but the production was too big budget actioner to fit with such a small story, if that makes sense. The best way to put it is this was a graphic novel style story, but a comic book style movie, and the two didn't work together. The director said in one of the featurettes that he didn't want to make a "Chinese Wire Movie", but it would've worked better as a Chinese Wire Movie than the mess that was searching for an identity that we had on the screen. If anything would've benefited from the Frank Miller 300 or Sin City style of direction, this was it. Imagine Garner as Elektra in her red outfit against the gray backdrop from those movies.

It's kind of too bad, because Jennifer Garner was really good, which was hard to believe after when I watched the extras and heard her talk like a Valley Girl, but I guess that's why she's an actress. I saw in one of the featurettes that she did a lot of work to learn martial arts so she could do her own stunts. Too bad we didn't get to see that with the overly cut fight scenes. As far as I could tell the director was trying to make up for Garner's lack of ability by not allowing us to focus on her for more than a split second during any fight, but it turns out this wasn't the case. I don't blame the director either, because he doesn't have many feature film credits, so I have to assume someone else was telling him to make it all Bourne Identity-ish. They probably also told him they didn't want another "Chinese Wire Film". Unlike Catwoman, that was just all kinds of wrong, this one could've been perfect if they'd just not gone the Hollywood blockbuster route.



Two cool people were in this. Cary Tagawa had like two or three scenes as the head of The Hand. Would've liked to see some more of him, but I'll take what I can get. The second was Terence Stamp. He played Garner's blind sensei. I've always liked Stamp, ever since I saw him hurling through space in that parallelogram. I've never really done the legwork on that deal, but was the flying parallelogram from the comics, or did they invent it strictly for the movie? This movie had nothing as cool as that, but I think by casting Stamp, they were hoping some of that coolness would rub off on them. Didn't work.

Another lost opportunity was the use of Daredevil villain Typhoid Mary. She was played by Natassia Malthe, who you may remember as Rayne from Uwe Boll's BloodRayne II. According to imdb, she's signed on to do a third BloodRayne film that's in pre-production as we speak, another Uwe Boll special. Anyway, the first problem with Typhoid Mary in Elektra was she was used sparingly as one of Tagawa's son's henchwomen. Even worse, she wasn't the same as her comic book persona, and for no apparent reason. In the movie, she could make people sick by breathing on them. A better deal would've been to make her a full fledged villain with the powers she had in the comic, and had her be Elektra's final fight. Man, this movie could've been so good, and as I write it irks me more and more that it wasn't.



There's a deleted scene that had a Ben Affleck cameo as Matt Murdock. When I read the reviews, people talked about the scene's deletion as one of its few saving graces, talking about Affleck with the kind of hatred I'd think one would save for people like Osama bin Laden. I mean, I understand not liking this or that actor, but it's not like he killed anyone's mom or something. It's funny, because that first Daredevil came out so long ago, and there's no word of a sequel at all. I guess Elektra is the sequel, but is it really? And probably the most likely new baddie for the sequel, Typhoid Mary, was wasted in this movie, so they're kind of stuck. I think that sucks, because Daredevil was one of my all time favorite comics, and I'm disappointed that it's been killed like this.

Again, these are mostly bad comic book movie showcases here, so no recommendation is needed. My final thoughts are that this could've been way better, and Garner wasn't one of the things that needed improving. Had they gone with the graphic novel aspect of the story and made a film that was a cross between Sin City and Crouching Tiger, it would've played out much better. Also, had they made Typhoid Mary the one from the comics, instead of something else that just happened to have her name, and had her be the head villain, it would've made for a more interesting story. I guess like its predecessor, it was all kinds of wrong, but could've been right.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0357277/