Hey folks, Harry here... I'm kinda rooting for this movie, more out of the fact I really dig Rob Bowman's work, but at the same time... The trailers have been pretty limp and the behind the scene featurettes that've been popping up forever have shown nothing to write home about. Here's Jemma McFatBack with AICN's first review of the flick...
ELEKTRA REVIEW
By Jemma McFatBack
Just to set out my stall, I’ve never read any of the comics that this references, or ANY comics for that matter. I have, however, seen pretty much every superhero movie released in the past few years, and while it’s not the worst of them, I’d advise anyone actually actively anticipating this film to stop doing so. It’s just… weak.
Had I only seen Daredevil once, I’d say that this was the lesser film but not by a huge margin. However, I happened upon Daredevil on TV a few weeks ago, and enjoyed it more than I remembered, more than I expected to. Ben Affleck doesn’t bring that much to it, but it’s got a decent gimmick (the ‘sonar’ effect), some fun action, an entertaining bad-guy in Colin Farrell and… well, from what I hear, the Director’s Cut addresses quite a few criticisms you’d level at the Theatrical Release.
Given that, it seems that Mark Steve Johnson made a pretty decent, edgy, violent flick that was cut up and toned down in the wake of Spidey’s success into a rather less satisfying one with a muddled tone. That then became a box office disappointment, maybe blamed on Affleck or audiences fearing an ‘unknown property’ (but never on it not being a great film, because the money-men know that a film’s quality has nothing to do with its success). Still, test audiences ‘liked the chick’. So they gave her a film but, because Daredevil wasn’t a big hit, distanced it from that one entirely. Does that make much sense to anyone else? One good film becomes an average one and a bad one? No, me neither.
So, yes, distanced entirely. There’s no direct mention of Daredevil in the film, or of any of the events in that film beyond the fact that she died. There’s no flashback with footage from the original, nothing like that. We just know that she died, and now Terence Stamp brings her back to life. Well, there’s one supposedly cute moment at the end where Stamp tells her that “sometimes your second life can be better than the first“ – a cheeky dig by the director, feeling his film is better? It certainly played that way to me.
This new Elektra is an assassin, and a reasonably cold one at that. She does kill a defenceless man at the start, and even though her conscience does reappear just when you’d expect (she’s told to kill the hunky guy and endearingly-troubled teenage girl she’s just met), you wonder for a moment whether she might go ahead and do it.
Of course, she doesn’t, and with that disappears any hope of anything beyond mundane. The bad-guys that chase her are poorly introduced, and feel throughout like minions to be dispatched in showy style. A couple get offed in a reasonable manner, others less so, but it all feels like build-up. There’s no pay-off in Elektra – for heaven’s sake, the lead bad-guy, the man with whom she shares a mysterious history, the one who really wants her dead… he doesn’t even die last. And with that, Elektra struts off in slow motion – a legend reborn? Hardly.
The film lacks anything truly memorable. A couple of mildly interesting things are raised (Elektra doesn’t realise the extent of her obsessive/compulsive nature) but never followed through and occasionally, nonsensical things occur. In one sequence, our heroes are running away from some wolf-like beast unleashed from a tattoo in a bad-guy’s chest (yes, it’s a little more fantastical than I expected in such regards), but when he arrives to savage those Elektra’s protecting, it’s left to snarl away at a stick while they all get into a safely PG-13 fight with another guy! Was something cut here? Elsewhere too? Her ability to see the future is used only to speed up a dull storyline or paper over plot holes. Her impressive fighting skills are filmed rather too close-up, or distractingly surrounded by occasionally poor CGI.
Garner’s not bad, Terence Stamp is dozy, Goran Visnjic is wasted… but unfortunately, through all the mediocrity, there’s very little that’s terrible to savage. It kept me engaged most of the time, raised a smile once in a while, never made much sense, then disappeared. At all times you’re conscious that you’re watching a film – you never get involved, lean forward in anticipation, take a short breath when the characters are in danger. You sit down, it happens, you go home. Of course, you could just not go in the first place.
Wake me up when they’re making action films for adults again?
He wants a real Action film for adults? Well, the same day this opens, the ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 remake is unleashed and it is fucking badass! Ethan and Fishburne fucking rule. It is hardcore, take no prisoners, bleak shit. I, personally, can not wait to see it again!
