Release Date: January 14, 2005
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Goran Visnjic, Kirsten Prout, Will Yun Lee, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Terence Stamp
Directed by: Mark Bowden
Written by: Raven Metzner, Zak Penn, Stu Zicherman
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox Films
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (action violence)
Kick-butt, badass action heroine movies are like trendy new cell phone accessories: Suddenly every girl in Hollywood has to have one. Thus Jennifer Garner and Elektra, a thin, lifeless, absurdly plotted spin-off of 2003’s Daredevil. Garner plays the title character, a deadly assassin educated in an ancient martial art called kimagure, which enables her to see most things before they happen -- though the fate of her movie, an almost unmitigated disaster that grinds the badass heroine cliché down to a fine powder, is apparently not one of those things.
In agreeing to do Elektra, Garner appears to have taken some pointers from Ben Affleck, who played Daredevil in the earlier film: She spends the entire movie with a serious, faraway look on her face, her long, angular features determinedly clenched in an expression that is supposed to convey a world-class assassin’s hair-trigger lethality. But it’s an act that’s quickly growing old: Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, and Milla Jovovich have all taken their shots at it in recent times, and with diminishing returns. Garner’s long hair and cherry-red dominatrix getup in Elektra aren’t so much sexy-tough as they are tiredly familiar.
The film’s director, Rob Bowman, doesn’t help matters much. His previous movie, Reign of Fire, was a sci-fi picture that used special effects like someone with a broken leg uses crutches; without a lot of effects here, he has almost no influence on the abysmal story (scripted by Zak Penn, Raven Metzner, and Stu Zicherman, with elements drawn from the Marvel comics and graphic novels by Frank Miller). Elektra, an assassin-for-hire, takes an assignment from her wisecracking manager, McCabe (Colin Cunningham), to kill a man named Mark Miller (Goran Visnjic) and his teenage daughter Abby (Kristin Prout). But Elektra befriends them instead, and discovers that Abby is an important part of a timeless war between good and evil -- which, in its present form, is being fought between Elektra’s mentor, a blind man named Stick (Terence Stamp), and an evil cartel called the Hand, which is led by Roshi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) and his right-hand man Kirigi (Will Yun Lee).
It’s never really clear why Elektra makes nice with the Millers instead of killing them; judging by the luxurious, expansive homes she lives in (they’re all glass and cedar and breathtaking views), she has made quite a living for herself as a professional assassin. But only because she doesn’t kill them can the rest of the movie happen, which makes Elektra like the journalist who decides what a story will be about before he reports on it. This movie has a specific conclusion in mind, and will stretch any plot point or character detail and require an unlimited suspension of disbelief to get there.
If Elektra is consistent about anything, it is that our heroine is deadly proficient with her weapon of choice, the three-pronged knives which she likes to twirl, post-fight, at her low-riding belt, which not only calls attention to her toned midriff but also results in the impression that she is a Victoria’s Secret model who has been cast as a gunslinger in some bizarre, postmodern Western. Indeed, the movie gets to its handful of fight scenes with a nearly audible sigh of relief; they are the standbys of a genre that has increasingly begun to see plot as a nuisance. The action in Elektra is filmed with the bland, slow-motion, techno-choreographed aesthetic that was popularized by The Matrix and then run into the ground by the Blade sequels. Like the rest of the film, there’s nothing here that hasn’t been done before, and better.
The movie’s lone bright spot is the wizened old master played by Terence Stamp; his East End drawl alone contains more charisma and depth than everyone else in the cast put together. This includes a pair of incredibly bland villains, played by Will Yun Lee and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa; a stale love interest done by Goran Visnjic; and the obligatory troublemaker of a teenage girl -- who, naturally, idolizes Elektra because she makes trouble for a living -- played by Kristen Prout.
Each of them seems to be competing with Garner to see who can act this thing down the farthest; after all, an essential component of being a badass action heroine (or being in a picture with one) is acting really serious all the time, because badass action heroines aren’t impressed by anything. But a role like this isn’t very becoming for Garner, who is actually a very charismatic actress when she wants to be -- she did well with lighter parts in movies like Catch Me If You Can and 13 Going on 30. Her eventual success, then, depends on whether she can avoid the stale, trendy roles like Elektra and choose the more unique parts that let her cut loose.
-- Craig Roush (craigroush@hotmail.com)