1.5 out of 5 stars

Buried beneath the ever-growing mountain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) are a few (usually terrible) films that preceded it: fossils of bad VFX, ridiculous superhero antics, and random racism and sexism. Elektra is one such relic, born from the ashes of Daredevil (2003). Indeed, Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner) is killed at the end of Daredevil, but a character’s death is never too big of a hurdle for Marvel. She should have stayed dead in this case, as her spin-off movie is about as substantial as a ghost.

Elektra demands that an audience’s disbelief be suspended, but wastes no time explaining what kind of supernatural forces both our heroes and villains are working with. It’s confusing since the previous film dealt with “regular” people, with heightened abilities to be sure, but nothing in the realm of prescience and resurrection. Nevertheless, Elektra is brought back from the dead by blind martial artist Stick (Terence Stamp), who takes her under his wing for a time. After being summarily dismissed without explanation, Elektra becomes a killer for hire, complete with a sexy red silk outfit threatening to fall apart at the slightest tug. No mention of Matt Murdock (Ben Affleck), the lawyer she had started to fall for in Daredevil, even though a cameo was filmed and ultimately scrapped. Considering Garner and Affleck’s chemistry had been one of the highlights of Daredevil, that feels like a missed opportunity.

Elektra then commits the number one sin for any contract killer: getting too close to her targets. She gets to know hot daddy Mark Miller (Goran Višnjić) and his 13-year-old daughter Abby (Kristen Prout) while stationed in a luxurious lakeside villa, before receiving the assignment to kill both of them. She turns into a bodyguard quickly when assassins show up to kill the father-daughter duo. After Stick refuses to help, she brings her charges to a farmhouse owned by her handler McCabe (Colin Cunningham).

Elektra commits many cinematic sins on top of that, starting with an obscure and contradictory exposition narration over Asian-inspired ink illustrations of the forces of Good and Evil battling it out. Who’s on either side of this mystical battle? Is Elektra the Chosen One, or whatever the narrator is talking about, or are we talking about another child? This sequence doesn’t seek to introduce questions which will find satisfying answers by the end. Instead, it appropriates Asian culture to give its heroine some credibility, even though she was already introduced in Daredevil. Not only is she not Asian (in the comic-books, Elektra is canonically Greek), but her protégée and sensei aren’t either.

To add insult to injury, the presumed forces of evil are a Tokyo-based organisation known as The Hand, led by a mostly Asian cast. The Hand’s leader Roshi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) instructs his son Kirigi (Will Yun Lee) to use his special assassin team to take down Elektra and capture Abby, referred to as The Treasure. Kirigi is determined to win his father’s approval and not let a “mere woman” get in his way. His team is a mish-mash of (non-Asian) weirdos with random powers who would be technically unstoppable if it were not for movie magic. Thankfully, Elektra has the power of (very selective) prescience on her side, and she predicts some of her opponents’ moves, enabling her to survive and keep her charges safe.

Elektra spends more time exploring its titular heroine’s past in numerous flashbacks and dreams, replaying some sequences so often that they lose all meaning. Early on, Elektra has a flashback to her dad Nikolas (Kurt Max Runte) forcing her five-year-old self (Laura Ward) to remain afloat in the pool using only her legs. Her mother (Jana Mitsoula) looks on, pleading with him to let her out. It’s framed as abuse, yet the same flashback sequence is replayed in the final fight scene, inspiring Elektra to “keep going” and defeat her enemy. What is the audience supposed to understand, that her dad’s lesson was worth the abuse? Her mom’s final moments, and Elektra’s accidental run-in with the assassin as he leaves the scene, are replayed at least five times. By the time the assassin’s face is revealed, the viewer has already guessed his identity, but the film needs to shoehorn its twist after milking that flashback ad nauseam.

Garner pours everything into her character, embodying Elektra with as much energy as she can muster, and she does a good job of it. She’s all pouty lips and sashaying hips, and her long silky hair is a star of its own, floating around her thanks to mysterious action scenes’ wind. That wind is an important secondary character, especially in the first half of the final battle sequence, where white sheets float all around her, obscuring her view and letting Kirigi run circles around her and taunt her. While it’s a cool idea for a fight sequence, the sheets stay up too long, turning into an annoying joke more than anything else. Talking of battle sequences, that’s another sin to add to Elektra’s tally. The film suffers from overly edited, choppy action scenes that are hard to follow. With Elektra using such iconic weapons, known as sai, the potential for epic fight scenes and impressive martial arts was ripe for the picking and is yet another missed opportunity.

It’s a shame Garner’s performance is in the service of such a poor screenplay. It doesn’t help that her acting is often overshadowed by clumsy VFX aimed to brighten her green contact lenses. Otherwise, Višnjić nails the dark brooding Mark, and Prout is a charming, bright presence as Abby; they make Elektra’s connection and compassion for them entirely believable. I also enjoyed Cunningham’s sassy take on McCabe, as he delivers an understated comic relief opposite Elektra’s seriousness. The villains’ performances are lukewarm, but the script is partially to blame. They’re given little to no backstory and motivations other than Kirigi’s need to please his father; everyone else comes out as flat, two-dimensional characters being evil just for the sake of it.

Elektra has an unrated Director’s Cut, which only runs three minutes longer but is re-edited to give more context to Elektra and The Hand’s supernatural powers, as well as reintegrating violent sequences that were cut to maintain the PG-13 rating. In both versions, Elektra features rich photography, with vivid colours, emphasising her iconic red outfit. The moody lighting is heavy and stylised while retaining warmth, whereas Daredevil was cold and grey.

Elektra was a total flop with both critics and audiences, and grossed $56M at the box office worldwide, barely covering its $43M budget. It didn’t help when it was revealed that the film’s star herself hated the final result, as reported by US Weekly at the time. It turns out she didn’t want to do it at all but was under contractual obligations post-Daredevil. It’s a shame considering Garner’s career as an action star had been cemented her her role as Sydney Bristow in the spy thriller series Alias (2001-06), and she’d just proven her comedic chops with the wildly successful 13 Going on 30 (2004). Thankfully, her version of Elektra was given a chance at redemption with a cameo in Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), along with Wesley Snipes’ Blade.

SWITZERLAND • CANADA • USA | 2005 | 97 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH • JAPANESE

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Cast & Crew

director: Rob Bowman.
writers: Zak Penn, Stuart Zicherman & M. Raven Metzner (based on comic-book characters created by Frank Miller & Mark Steven Johnson).
starring: Jennifer Garner, Goran Višnjić, Will Yun Lee, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Terence Stamp, Colin Cunningham, Chris Ackerman, Edson T. Ribeiro, Bob Sapp, Natassia Malthe & Hiro Kanagawa.