THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
Spin-offs are made to bank off of something that gave a good impression the first time around. Jennifer Garner made that mark when playing Elektra in Daredevil that she got her own movie. Was it worth it? Sadly, no.
PLOT
The 2005 film reveals the titular protagonist to have survived her previous battle wounds thanks to being revived by a blind martial artist named Stick. When she recovered, she would train the ancient art of Kimagure, where practitioners will have precognition and the ability to resurrect the dead. Stick would expel her from training though due to her refusal to let go of rage she's been feeling since her mother's murder. When she leaves, she uses her training to be a contract killer with the aide of an agent named McCabe. Her latest gig involves a large offer from an anonymous client that instructs her stay in a rented home for a few days until the targets are revealed. In her waiting period, she befriends a family in the area, Mark Miller and his teenage daughter Abby. She does bond with them when they invite her for Christmas dinner, but would be devastated to learn they would be the targets she was waiting for. She backs out on the deal until she has to protect them from assassins of the crime syndicate or ninja mercenaries, The Hand. The organization's master Roshi learns of the failed attempt and assigns his son Kirigi to lead his own team to success. His team includes: Stone (Bob Sapp), Typhoid (Natassia Malthe), Tattoo (Chris Ackerman) and Kinoku (Edison T Ribeiro). Elektra considers leaving the Miller family to be protected by Stick, but he rejects them due to how she must overcome self doubt. So she compromises by having them take shelter in McCabe's country house, but it would be temporary when Kirigi's group finds them. McCabe sacrifices himself to go them time to escape through an underground that'll take them to the forest. Elektra is able to kill Stone while Mark & Abby defend themselves against Kinoku until Typhoid exposes the protagonist to the poisonous Kiss of Death. As that happens, the family the Millers get captured by Kirigi. That would be undone when Stick shows up with his group of chaste ninjas that drive them away. Once they leave, he saves Elektra again and takes the Millers under his protection this time. At his dojo, he explains that Abby is a martial arts prodigy dubbed a 'Treasure' which the Hand want to use as a weapon. Hearing this, Elektra assumes Stick set up the contract knowing she'll test her compassion. One night, she confronts Kirigi via astral projection and challenges him to a duel where the winner decides the Treasure’s fate. Elektra would be overpowered until Abby intervenes and gives her time to recuperate. When she does, she is able to kill Kirigi, Tatoo & Typhoid, one by one, only after the latter poisons the Treasure. She is able to save her when letting go of her rage to use Kimagure to resurrect her. The following morning, she decides to leave on her own again. Once she kisses Mark goodbye, she gives Abby advice to try living a normal life. As the Elektra wonders the Treasure will grow up to be like her, the film ends with Stick assuring her she didn’t turn out so bad before she departs.
THOUGHTS
Daredevil was a guilty pleasure film for me to watch at the time because there was enough good to differ from the bad, but I cannot say the same here because this is straight up trash. Director Rob Bowman was tasked to make something close to being cool and it honestly falls flat scene after scene. The fight scenes are created with solid editing/choreography, but the visual effects are not aging well when seeing Tattoo's powers of animals coming from his body or the Hand turning to green smoke when dying. I mean the latter is just stupid in terms of hammering the point ninja always vanish. With a shorter run time compared to the predecessor, you know this way more rushed in comparison and it's a problem. Due to watching the series Alias, Garner is still a strong lead here in making Elektra a lone wolf protagonist who is all about keeping a distance for everyone's protection physically and emotionally. Typically, she caves with Abby because she sees herself in her, a similar feistiness in life that Kirsten Zein shoes in enough to be believable. I wasn't hooked with Goran Visnijc as Mark because he doesn't really show anything interesting about him outside of being an overprotective parent. That is not enough to say he deserved to kiss her Elektra because there should be more of his personality to explore. The biggest castings that pissed me off the most was having iconic actors Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Roshi and Terrence Stamp, in which they are also one noted. We don't get enough time to explain the power hungry Roshi is all about that gets passed to his loyal & determined son Kirigi that's embraced through actor Will Yun Lee. Stick is also underdeveloped because we don't understand his wisdom or teaching methods apart from the need to be free of anger.. That's a healthy motive, but it's so forced of a macguffin that our protagonist has to achieve until the end. Martial arts mentors/senseis have a habit of being mysterious, but not that far. With such poor writing done on the characters, it leads to a whole chain of problems that don't make sense when trying to roll along with the story and not even this director's cut does any favors. Like is there any reason to why Elektra was hired to kill DeMarco (Jason Isaac)? Daredevil killed Quesada because he was a rapist, but we don't anything about this target and we just gotta assume he's a mobster. If he's somewhat bad like Kingpin, it would've nor hurt making that clear. And I think Abby is overrating Elektra in saying she’s cool when she used a box cutter to prevent her from escaping with a necklace she was trying to steal. I know she’s trying to be friendly, but she’s stretching out an opinion of her pretty fast. She’s even dumb calling for her name when she was supposed to hide in the forest. Yeah it helped, but it could’ve gone worse. Also, how did Elektra not see the darts coming if she was able predict something bad would happen if left one of the rooms upstairs. It even feels weird to notice the dart gun had enough of a load to not be reloaded the second it was introduced. And ain’t it dumb that Roshi’s lawyer calls Kirigi an abomination when he’s the one who sent goons to kill Abby. And why the hell does Tatoo bother turning into a spider if he was gonna dissolve through the walls anyway? He could’ve tried being a bird an wait it out. And Kirigi takes too long in the need to kill Elektra when he has the upper hand, which comes off like he wants to lose. And I’m sorry, no matter how cool it sounded on paper for Elektra to throw her sai at Typhoid when she was so far from her is bullshit. Having said what I said, I don’t believe there are enough things to make this film watchable for any kind of Marvel fan. To wrap up, Elektra is one of the comic book genre’s worst adaptations for not even trying to be anywhere near cool in the sam vein had. Whatever kind of moviegoer you are, avoid this.
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