ELEKTRA (2005) Under 3 months from theatre to video, ouch Daredevil had the dubious distinction of being the lowest-grossing movie ever to have made as much money as it did on its opening weekend, and since that still counts as success in a lot of Hollywood accounting books, it was a gimme that one of its principals would be back in another movie. Between Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, which would you choose? If you want to make your money back, or if you have eyes, that's no choice at all. Elektra is better than Daredevil, but not by a lot. The pretty scenery (both the California locations and Garner herself) is a nice step up, and it's got some thespian centers of gravity like Terence Stamp and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, easily outclassing the likes of Michael Clarke Duncan and that fat guy from Swingers. But the plot is still total z-grade cheese, the action is gimmicky and often annoying to watch, and the whole thing plays like its makers were terrified of grossing out a target audience of thirteen-year-old girls. If Daredevil is the worst superhero movie since its modern renaissance in the last six years or so, Elektra is the most timid. Stamp's voiceover prologue is standard fantasy epic cheese...shadowy battle between good and evil, a prophecied she-warrior who will tip the balance, you know the drill. This movie let me know in very short order just how lacking it was going to be. It's nice to see Garner in that sexy red outfit, but she's still basically playing Sidney Bristow, if you drain away all the playfulness, vulnerability, and humanity until all you have left is this cold, hard shell with a couple of big knives. She's a paid assassin now, not caring who she whacks (apparently they're always bad people) until she gets a contract to whack hunky single dad Goran Visnjic and his precocious thirteen-year-old daughter (Kirsten Prout). A supposedly pulse-pounding scene in which she prepares to fire an arrow at them from afar is a hideous miscalculation; even the most naïve thirteen-year-old girls in the audience are going to be pretty confident Elektra isn't going to coldly murder a thirteen-year-old girl. But, for those few left with some doubt, we get a ham-handed juxtaposition of the family idyll with the POUNDING POUNDING POUNDING drums of Elektra aiming that arrow. Indeed her conscience intervenes, incurring the wrath of The Hand, some sort of Japanese crime syndicate that represents the bad side of that shadowy battle. The good side is led by Terence Stamp, as the cryptic and blind Jedi master (and part-time pool hustler) who instructed Elektra. That's basically it; those Yakuza-type dudes send a couple of waves of badguys after Elektra and her new friends but otherwise just sit around a table and are never really dealt with, free to send more waves after the movie's over. There's one plot twist (and super-sop to the target demographic), which the trailer gives away. Elektra's fearsome fighting skills are used to make prolonged contests before each badguy is destroyed by his own stupidity or some hard-to-swallow twist of physics. I never got much of a handle on just what made Elektra anything more than a fighter grrl, except for her super-speed and some sort of second sight which allows her to see...what? The future? Really far away? Around corners? The two on-screen kisses are quick, tidy and passionless, the word "bullshit" is heard once, and the "serious" violence we see (there are at least three fight scenes where nobody really intends to hurt each other, basically reducing them to reactive gymnastics) is almost all against superpowered demons who explode into yellow dust when they're killed. I must sound lately like I want movies loaded with blood and nudity, but that's not really the case; I just think that violence should be dangerous, and sexual chemistry should be sexy. This movie came close when one character is swarmed with snakes. Otherwise, it was way off the mark; all those thirteen-year-old girls are going to come out of this movie jonesing for something with some edge to it, like the longhaired guy on American Idol. I used to hope that Garner would get a worthy big-screen hit; then I realized that any episode of Alias is more thrilling and sexy than anything I can reasonably imagine her doing in theatres. BACK TO THE E's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE