DAREDEVIL was a movie I really enjoyed.
It felt like a comic book, and even though it wasn’t a great movie, it had a lot of heart.
It also introduced Jennifer Garner as Elektra Natchios, a poor little rich girl of sorts that could kick ass, but had a tender side.

Elektra is the inevitable spin off film. Just like Elektra spun off from the original Daredevil comic books, the anti-heroine gets her own flick. Unfortunately, unlike Daredevil, this film doesn’t feel so good.

I don’t want to be too hard on Elektra, because I’m really not all that familiar with the character as written in the comics. So I’m basically trying to review this movie as just a movie and not as an adaptation from a comic but I know I’ll keep finding things to nitpick at anyway.

Jennifer Garner returns as Elektra, and while the film gets into the fact that she was resurrected, it makes no reference to the fact that she was killed by Bullseye, or her relationship with Matt Murdock / Daredevil. I found this annoying. Garner is very good, and she looks great, but it’s not enough to raise this movie from a low rent action flick. There was no…”magic”. I didn’t even like her red outfit, which was probably only used to appease comic book fans who complained that in Daredevil she wore black instead of red like in the comics. But the red outfit in the film looks nothing like the outfit from the comics anyway, so it’s irrelevant. And it looks tacky anyway.

Terence Stamp plays Stick, a blind sensei who trains Elektra after she is brought back to life. He does an OK job with what he’s given, but again, I’ve never read his comics’ background with Elektra and so I can’t judge. I do know that in the comic book world, he did help train Matt Murdock / Daredevil, but Stick wasn’t in the movie Daredevil. OK.

Kirsten Prout plays a young girl that Elektra must protect. Her role was an important one and I’m sorry, but I didn’t buy her in the role. I mean, imagine that a young Natalie Portman was in the role. If she was any bit as good as she was in The Professional (at the ripe old age of 12 at the time) this movie would be much better. But the young actress here was a distraction, and just not believable.

And though I’m not very familiar with the character in the comics, Typhoid Mary is in this movie. In the comics she has always looked like some sorta of insane clown prostitute kabuki dancer person. But here, she looks like a runway model, albeit one with a darker edge. And she’s referred to only as Typhoid, not Typhoid Mary. And I just don’t know why Hollywood has to fuck everything up.

So yeah, unfortunately, Elektra is a disappointment.
I hope I don’t start to hear the tolling of the bell for the comic book movie as we know it. Hopefully with Sin City and Batman Begins coming up, the future gets brighter for this genre!