Author: arnab

i watched this a couple of nights ago. i suppose it is entertaining enough, despite some casual racism and misogyny (which coincide in the characterization of a latina character) and a plot that increasingly strains credulity. marky mark is a compelling presence, andre 3000 holds his own, terence howard is fine, and chiwetel ejiofor hides his accent well–once again, why do brits do so much better at american accents than yanks do at brit ones?

more interesting would be a discussion of the film’s racial politics vis a vis the career of its director, john singleton. i’m not feeling up to it now but this is roughly the film’s plot: a saintly, old white woman who apparently lives in the ‘hood in detroit is gunned down; her four adopted sons, 2 white, 2 black, go about figuring out why and getting revenge. the bad guys are almost all black, from gangbangers to organized gangsters to corrupt politicians (there is one corrupt white cop as well) . interestingly, there’s some class issues thrown in as well but in a half-baked kind of way. the pleasures here are mostly those of very macho banter among the four brothers, marky mark’s believable inhabitation of his character, and some great shoot ’em up scenes.

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”.