Elektra

Elektra - **

When a big budget action movie is dumped in January hell, it's a decent premonition that they have absolutely nothing in the way of expectations for its success. Either that or the film's studio has ludicrously naive hopes for January as a box office draw. While the latter could be true for the Rob Bowman directed Elektra, 20th Century Fox would have been absolutely justified in believing the former. This film is a muddled up emotionless action picture that goes around in circles without managing to progress at any point throughout. Now this is an unofficial spin-off from the 2003 Ben Affleck hit Daredevil (back when he was still making hits), but aside from a few seconds of archived footage, the original film is not even referenced. Instead, we see an Elektra who is supposed to be more reminiscent of the comic book heroin, but in the end fails to tribute either the screen or print version of the character. While Jennifer Garner tries her best to make the poor writing work, she falls sort because she has virtually nothing to work with. Zakk Penn and company have managed to actually make a Garner character seem condescending, dull and quite frankly, a bit of a bitch. Now the action sequences are intense if not exactly enthralling, and they're perhaps the most enjoyable part of the movie (apart from perhaps the salacious camera shots of Garner clad in Elektra's costume which of course only panders to heterosexual males and likeminded females), but they're too few and far between. In the end, this is just another dull, disappointing piece that fails to create identifiable characters like Matt Murdoch or even Elektra herself in the Daredevil film. Thumbs down.