When will people learn that the dead, well, should remain dead? From "Frankenstein" to "Death Becomes Her" and a million zombie movies in between and after, it's all too apparent that you shouldn't mess with the natural progression of things. Yet, people still try, both in movies and regarding those who make them.
In particular I'm talking about "Elektra" and its title character. When we last saw her in 2003's "Daredevil," she was a nimble vixen who thought Ben Affleck killed her father (he didn't, just the movie, along with many others) and thus sprung into action yielding some three-pronged daggers. Alas, she learned that Colin Farrell's Bullseye character was appropriately named and met her demise during a rooftop battle.
Thus, you may ask, how does she return in a movie where she's the main character and everything now revolves around her? Well, in true Hollywood form, she's brought back to life, not by a defibrillator or heroically miraculous surgery, but rather the magic hands of her sensei. You know, like Mr. Miyagi in the "Karate Kid" flicks with the wash on/wash off practice that also yielded injury healing (or at least pain relieving) hands. Here, those hands belong to the two-time Superman nemesis, Terrence Stamp, her blind martial arts mentor who -- in one of the film's many flashback sequences -- uses such a technique to bring her back to life.
As in any of those cautionary tales, that's a bad thing -- here on both the part of the character and the resultant movie. You see, once reanimated and then kicked out of kick school, she feels rejected and thus goes out on a hired killing spree, something of a kissing cousin to Uma Thurman in the "Kill Bill" flicks.
She then finds -- for some quite shaky reasons that yes, involve even more flashbacks -- that she can't "downsize" her latest targets (a father/daughter duo). She then goes on the run with them, battling various supernaturally-based martial arts ninjas who operate under a secret organization known as "The Hand" (what is this, an old Palmolive commercial with Marge dipping everyone's fingers?).
That's all fine and dandy (and certainly leaves plenty of clean fingernails), if certainly not particularly original (not even taking into account it being based on a Marvel Comics comic book). Yet, like an unearthed corpse, this offering doesn't particularly smell fresh and ends up herking and jerking its way from start to finish much like Frankenstein's monster or Meryl Streep's backwards headed character in that old Zemeckis film.
The problem doesn't particularly lie with the resurrected one -- after all it's the perky yet tough Jennifer Garner ("13 Going on 30," TV's "Alias") -- but rather her masters -- in this case director Rob Bowman ("Reign of Fire," "The X-Files") and screenwriters Zak Penn ("X2," "Behind Enemy Lines") and Stuart Zicherman & Raven Metzner ("A Cool Breeze on the Underground," "Deathlok") -- and their master plan for her.
Apparently aspiring to deliver something of a cross between the stylish "House of Flying Daggers" and brutal "Kill Bill" films (all of which feature butt-kicking femmes in the leads), the filmmakers instead give us a rather hokey "B" movie that doesn't have strong enough direction or writing to play with the big boys (or girls in this case). Sure, there's the standard mixture of high-octane action and brooding drama, but neither -- whether separate or collectively -- is as good as you've likely seen in other such films.
With the aid of stunt coordinator and fight choreographer Mike Gunther, Bowman offers up plenty of action, but it's of the over-edited and trying too hard to be stylish variety. While I'm sure that all involved are either proficient or just trained hard for the various fights, action and other stunts, the direction is so muddled that you have no faith that any of what's on the screen is "real." It doesn't help that various characters zip around like the Road Runner, and while I understand the supernatural bent, it does nothing for the action or overall picture other than reinforce that B movie status.
Alas, the drama is just as bad or worse. I know that superhero flicks almost always feature the back story that inspired the protagonist's career choice and/or affects their current motivation, but the one here is repetitive and not particularly novel (it involves the title character's memories of her mother's death as well as her likening her new charge to herself back at that age). We get the point the first time around, but the filmmakers keep returning to such flashbacks that only serve to stymie whatever forward momentum the film had going for it.
Rather than that, they should have focused more on the mother/daughter, big sis/little sis, mentor/student relationship between Garner's character and the prodigy one played by Kirsten Prout (making her American feature debut). They could have evoked the same back story through Elektra's involvement with the girl and thus spared us of the plethora of flashbacks featuring, among other unnecessary things, rapidly moving storm clouds in the sky. Some of that relationship is there, but not enough (and it doesn't even come close to the Ripley/Newt one in "Aliens").
Garner is fine in the role, appears competent enough in the action and certainly looks fetching in her skintight leather jumpsuit, but the lackluster script ultimately lets her down and she can't do much but kick butt when not sporting a scowl or furrow in her brow. The same holds true for Goran Visnjic ("Welcome to Sarajevo," TV's "ER") as the young girl's father, but Prout is decent in her part.
Although he gets a few fun moments, Stamp ("The Limey," "Bowfinger") can't do much with his mentor character, and Will Yun Lee ("Die Another Day," "Torque") plays his villain ninja just like you've seen in countless other "B" martial arts flicks. A few interesting sidekick characters are present -- including one whose tattoos come to life and peel off his body and another named Typhoid who has to be related to Poison Ivy from one of those "Batman" films -- but they're notable only for those characteristics and not the performances of those who inhabit them.
Overall, the film isn't quite as bad as one might think and/or expect (it's no "Catwoman"), but it's clearly nowhere as good as it might have been with better work behind the camera. Even so, it's pretty much dead on arrival, just like the title character before she was needlessly resurrected. "Elektra" rates as a 4 out of 10.
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