despite beginning like a bad comp paper–“since time began there has been a battle between good and evil”; yes, even in the proterozoic era cyanobacteria were divided into these two camps–elektra is not at all a bad way to pass 97 minutes and is certainly better than the piece of crap (daredevil) it derived from. very little backstory, and what little we get is incomplete, incoherent and best of all, highly silly. but somehow i didn’t care that none of it made much sense–it felt like picking up a superhero comic in the middle of a story arc, not knowing what had come before or why people were fighting each other. jennifer garner is adequate as some super ninja assassin who from time to time fights in red bondage genie garb that must surely make twirling through the air a dicey proposition–then again she probably gets her underwiring from the same shop that makes her cool long daggery thingies. terence stamp shows up as a blind super ninja assassin trainer, but mostly looks like he is auditioning for the role of a vampire elder in the next underworld movie. (yes, this film continues the tradition of western action movies in which white people are generally better at eastern martial arts than people actually from the east, who are naturally villains.) and there are some cool action scenes. and a lesbian life-sucking death-kiss from an arch villainess named typhoid. and the dialog is so generic that at key moments i was anticipating exact lines. in short, good fun.
yes, yes, i know i should have put this under “enjoyable crap”.
Oddly enough I watched this on HBO last night as well. I switched over from a Chelsea game ten minutes into the movie so I missed the “good versus evil” set up. Still, it transcended the cheesiness of most of these kinds of movie. The relationship between Elektra and the little girl works to humanize Garner, and, for once, the flashbacks are more helpful than intrusive. The only wrong note was the red bondage gear in which Garner fights the final battle. It was out of character (to its credit, the movie does not wallow in her body and she is covered up more often than not) and makes her look silly. It’s a fine line between crap and enjoyable crap, and this one is on the right side of that line.
You’re fucking with us, right? Like the time my friends tried to convince us that Short Circuit 2 was actually a decent oddball comedy?
I have trouble imagining myself watching this even if I came across it late one evening after a deep gin-soaked bender which left me thirsting for something (anything) to watch, AND with my limbs strapped down so that I couldn’t handle the remote, and my eyes pinned open and head braced so I couldn’t turn away. I would still not watch, I think.
Hey, it’s no ‘Kung Fu Hustle’ but it is actually pretty good. And I think my dislike of ‘Catwoman’ shows my fine-grained capacity to differentiate between the two main varieties of crap. Supposing all the conditions you lay out in your post, Mike, and the remote only gave you a choice of this or watching the State of the Union speech tonight, what would you choose? Well, well?
Hmmmm…. Your comparison forces my hand. Yes, I’d watch Jennifer Garner. But I still think this is a conspiracy to con us, much like Jeff’s attempts to make us think he loved Goodbye Dragon Inn.
mike, you are so easy!
Netflix just informed me that ‘Bubble’ is shipping today. I’m telling you this to try and recover some shred of movie dignity.
i, on the other hand, am next scheduled to receive the cave.