Elektra UMD
Thanks to the cinematic success of the 2003 film, Daredevil (with the second best February weekend opening of $43.5 million, going on to gross $102 million), the powers that be in Hollywood decided to green light a spin-off starring Jennifer Garner as Elektra. At the helm is Rob Bowman who’s directorial career is an impressive list of TV hits running back into the 80s...
Thanks to the cinematic success of the 2003 film, Daredevil (with the second best February weekend opening of $43.5 million, going on to gross $102 million), the powers that be in Hollywood decided to green light a spin-off starring Jennifer Garner as Elektra. At the helm is Rob Bowman who’s directorial career is an impressive list of TV hits running back into the 80s (starting with 21 Jump Street and progressing to Stingray, MacGyver, Quantum Leap, Baywatch, Star Trek: TNG and more recently The X-Files). His only film credits to date though are the X-Files movie (forgettable) and Reign of Fire (which I quite liked).
Now I’m sure that those who saw Daredevil will remember, but for those that didn’t see the parent film, Elektra is killed towards the end by Colin Farrell’s Bullseye. Is the Elektra film a prequel then? Well no, it’s set after Daredevil and Elektra has been miraculously raised from the dead by her blind sensei, Stick (Terence Stamp).
When we’re first introduced to Elektra in her second incarnation she’s had a bit of a career change and become a contract killer (I’d like to have been in the career’s advice office for that conversation!). The film starts out from the victims’ point of view, a rather nasty man called DeMarco that Elektra’s been hired to kill. After several near misses he holes up in a mansion with a substantial security force armed to the teeth. The head of security is confident of keeping his boss alive, DeMarco meanwhile seems to have accepted his fate and is resigned to meet his maker. Surely enough, the security guards go down one by one until it’s just Elektra and DeMarco. What was the point of these opening scenes since we’ve never heard of DeMarco and he certainly won’t figure anywhere again. Well this series of events introduces us to a new, hard as nails Elektra that has no compunction in killing and takes no prisoners.
The main film plot revolves around Elektra’s next, big money, contract, negotiated for her by her agent McCabe. Elektra is told to go to an island residence and wait for details of her targets. Whilst waiting she relaxes a bit and meets the neighbours, a father, Mark (Goran Visnjic) and his daughter Abby, after she breaks into Elektra’s house. When she finds out that her next job is to kill Mark and Abby, who are seemingly innocent, she wrestles with her conscience, comes close to fulfilling the contract, but in the end can’t go through with it.
From this point onwards the film revolves more around Mark and Abby, particularly Abby, than Elektra. It turns out that there is a battle between the forces of good and evil and that every so often there comes along a motherless girl called ‘the gift’ that has the potential to become a great warrior and turn the tide of battle for whichever side finds her and trains her. It turns out that ‘the gift’ is Abby and that her and Mark have been on the run from the evil organisation called ‘the hand’. Lead by Roshi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), the evil group meetings seem more like board meetings of a major corporation, it seems that in today’s world evil wears a suit.
There is one exception to this though, Roshi’s son Kirigi (Will Yun Lee), leader of a group of misfits with supernatural powers. The other leading elements of the hand look down upon, while at the same time fearing Kirigi’s ‘freaks’ as they make a formidable force. Amongst the groups more interesting members are Tattoo, a guy who’s many tattoos come to life and take form out of his skin, Stone, a great hulk of a man who, like the name suggests is made from stone and Typhoid, a woman that seems to exude poison, everything she passes or touches withers and dies (attractive though she is, a kiss from this girl isn’t a good idea!). All in all it’s not a group that you’d like on your tail, but after Elektra decides to protect Mark and Abby instead of killing them and takes out a couple of the hand’s ninjas in the process, it’s this group of supernatural assassins that’s sent after them.
The writers seem to have turned the Elektra character into a very serious impassionate individual. Even though she takes pity on Mark and Abby and protects them, she does it grudgingly. There are a few early plot developments and the story is laid out quite nicely, but once the path is laid it runs to its conclusion in a linear fashion, not a twist or turn to be seen. The final showdown between Elektra and Kirigi was a bit drawn out, but you were never in doubt of the outcome. Jennifer Garner did the best with the script she was given, Kirsten Prout was given an annoying character in Abby and unfortunately the film was centred around here. Goran Visnjic was quite good as the concerned and protective father and provided a bit of a love interest for Elektra so we could actually see that she did have feelings in there somewhere, even if they did only show for a couple of seconds.
Overall I thought that Elektra was passable but didn’t really live up to the potential of the character and wasn’t consistent with the character in Daredevil. The action wasn’t spectacular and neither were the special effects, although they weren’t bad either. There were a few nice set piece battles, I particularly liked the initial battle with the hands’ ninjas and their rotary dart guns. On the PSP the picture was good, but a little dark towards the end and on a small screen you end up straining to see bits of the action. The soundtrack was unremarkable but clear. Language options are limited to English and French but there’s a decent number of options for subtitles. Where this UMD excels is in its extra features. Unlike most featureless UMDs this film includes a ten minute ‘the making of Elektra’ documentary and several deleted scenes which can be viewed with or without a commentary by Rob Bowman. All in all the feature film is worth watching, once, but doesn’t have too much re-watch potential.
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