er name is legendary: Elektra. An assassin who whispers in your ear before she kills you. A ninja so stealthy that she's almost upon you by the time you realize she's there.
But there's a person behind the urban legend. Elektra Natchios (Garner) is a real woman with a troubled past. Her mother was murdered when Elektra was just a child.
Her father died some time later, in an episode involving a man with a target on his head and a guy in a red suit. But the final blow came from her beloved mentor, Stick (Stamp), her master in the secret martial art of ninjitsu. Though Elektra was his most powerful student, she was too acquainted with violence. She must leave, Stick tells her. "Is this a test, sensei?" the anguished Elektra asks. "No. Not a test. Just go."
Devastated, Elektra has carved out a carefully controlled existence. Her agent, McCabe (Colin Cunningham), procures an assignment. She kills. She gets paid.
Her next assignment: Rent a house on a forest island, and wait for word on her next targets. While there, Elektra meets a young girl, Abby (Kirsten Prout), and her dad, Mark (Visnjic). In young Abby, Elektra senses something special.
When the assignment comes, it's a shock. Elektra must kill Abby and Mark. She draws her bow, gets them in the crosshairs. And she can't do it.
Someone else will come, McCabe tells her. And they do. Black-clad ninjas with secret powers show up at Abby and Mark's house. Elektra barely saves them, and realizes who is after them: The Hand, a mystical brotherhood of evil.
Elektra makes the fateful decision to take Abby and Mark with her, on the run. They will be pursued by The Hand's most lethal assassins, each with his or her own super power: Typhoid Mary (Natassia Malthe), Stone (Bob Sapp), Tattoo (Chris Ackerman) and Kirigi (Will Yun Lee).
Skimpy costume, skimpy story
Elektra, based on the Marvel Comics series, is nominally a spinoff of 2003's limp superhero movie Daredevil. But it is really an entirely different project, with its own star, look and feel, and stands as an improvement. But not by much.
First the positives. Director and genre veteran Bowman (The X-Files, Reign of Fire) definitely knows how to shoot action and supernatural effects. All that X-Files experience shows in the moodiness of his images and the ratcheting of suspense.
The story also feels faithful, in spirit if not strictly to the letter, to the source material, particularly the Elektra graphic novels of Frank Miller. Elektra's personal journey is appropriately dark. And she's finally in the outlandish red costume, which, though a liberal interpretation of the comics' outfit, nevertheless captures its improbable flowiness.
But for all its knife-wielding action and spectral thrills, Elektra lacks edginess and depth, perhaps too comic-book for its own good. Elektra's almost operatically tragic background is filled in through flashbacks, and brief exchanges between Garner's Elektra and Stamp's inscrutable Stick sketch out the dimensions of her moral dilemma. But it all feels as flimsy as Elektra's costume, and the viewer will find it difficult to care much about Elektra's plight.
This is not helped by Garner's performance. She is without question in top shape (one can't help but be impressed by her one-armed pull-ups) and credibly performs Elektra's death-defying stunts and sword fights. But treading Elektra's emotional path proves more difficult than twirling sais, and Garner can't adequately convey the roiling emotions beneath the red satin.
Newcomer Prout, as the mini-Elektra, is spunky enough, and some of her interchanges with Garner provide a few of the movie's genuine sparks. But she quickly grows tiresome with her whininess. Visnjic, all hunk and no character, seems there just to give Garner someone to kiss. The villains are thinner than cardboard.
