Elektra
                                                                                                             
Director: Rob Bowman
Year: 2005
Rating: 5.0
Here is yet another female action film that under performed at the box office. They were all released around the same time. Admittedly, Elektra, Ultraviolet and Aeon Flux all had issues other than just having a female leading an action film. But still it put a damper on the genre for a while. This film was critically bashed as well and though it has some soft spots - was a romance really needed? -  I thought it was ok.  Jennifer Garner who I became a big fan of while watching Alias gives the film a heft and seriousness that it doesn't really deserve. Like the character, Elektra keeps coming back on TV and even Jennifer says she may reprise the character again. Not that she apparently wanted to this time, but it was part of her contract when she was Elektra in Daredevil.  The Elektra character began under Frank Miller and has a very convoluted past in the comics. She puts War and Peace to shame. An assassin for the mob at one time, on her own, teams up with Daredevil, tries to kill Daredevil, joins The Hand, tries to destroy The Hand (a secret society of killers) and so on. She has trouble making up her mind.



In this one Elektra begins as a paid assassin - a legend - once she accepts a contract, pick a burial spot. I don't quite get the red outfit she wears when on a kill, but I expect it has a background. After completing her mission and taking out the target and his many bodyguards, she goes home to relax. Take a vacation. Do crossword puzzles. Catch up on Barney Miller. For about five minutes and then her agent offers her big money for one more. Well, she was bored anyways. She is sent to a secluded island with a great view of the beach, makes friends with the nearby father and his daughter Abby. Christmas dinner and a kiss. Then the instructions arrive. Kill the father and daughter. Oh shit. But dinner. Now I have to kill them. But when she can't pull the trigger, The Hand sends more killers and she decides to protect them. Superhero type killers - a woman whose kiss and touch is poison, a giant of a man, a weirdo whose tattoos of animals can come to life and the leader who is a master martial artist. She should have just stayed home. A decent amount of action but it falls into a glue trap with flashbacks to her childhood and bonding with the girl. Terrence Stamp plays her sifu.