Screenings of Elektra are preceded by trailers for a couple of Fox TV shows. That's fitting because this high-tech, comic book-based, empty movie plays like an extended episode of a TV show.
Lots of flash. A little jiggle (Elektra dresses like a hooker in tight, red, lace-up togs in her career as a hitwoman). Lots of one-dimensional, if colorful, characters racing around in pursuit of mayhem.
It's pretty impressive when the tattoos of a crow and a wolf on the body of a guy known as Tattoo (Chris Ackerman) leap off his skin and become very real or when the gal known as Typhoid (Natassia Malthe) causes leaves to wither and drop dead off plants as she walks by. It's more impressive when these demonic creatures disintegrate in a cloud of green smoke.
Jennifer Garner, who has won a following from the TV show Alias, made a splash playing Elektra in the Ben Affleck surprise hit Daredevil two years ago. And though the character seemed to have been killed off at the end of that movie, the magic of the box office has resurrected her. "She died years ago," one character swears, though his friend cautions, "Well, maybe somebody raised her from the dead." Yeah, Hollywood.
A mysterious professional assassin on whom the delicate balance between good and evil hinges, Elektra certainly has a way with her very long, three-pronged knife. "I kill people because I'm good at it," she says coolly and soullessly.
Yet she's deeply dismayed to learn that her latest assignment is to kill the lakeside neighbors, a good-looking man (Goran Visnjic from E.R.) and his 13-year-old smarty-pants daughter, Abby (Kirsten Prout), she has just befriended, even though she caught Abby breaking into her house.
Before we can get into the psychological traumas this new assignment may cause Elektra, she discovers that the neighbors have also been targeted by a gang known as The Hand. Their Asian leaders are searching high and low for some mighty weapon with magical powers that has been passed down through the centuries.
One of them also seems to have a connection to Elektra and her recurring nightmares based on a childhood memory of a scary demon exiting the bedroom window of her murdered mother. This is creepy and freaky, but neither the script nor Rob Bowman's direction nor Garner's playing make the terrifying heart of the story seem more than contrived. Other films based on comic book characters -- Batman and the Spider-Man duo -- have uncovered the sensitive and operatic underpinnings of the comics. But they were handled with care. Bowman has made his mark on series TV, especially The X-Files, which may account for Elektra playing so much like a TV show -- lots of sizzle without much meat to the characters.
Hovering on the edges are white-haired Terence Stamp as Elektra's blind martial arts master -- her Yoda, if you will -- who appears occasionally to deliver pieces of carefully calibrated sage advice.
Despite tattoos coming to life and demons and swarming snakes and more wonders, Elektra plays surprisingly flat -- all at one drumbeat level that's occasionally rattled by some startling sight.
Although some have called Garner "the new Julia Roberts," she reminded me more of Angelina Jolie, but without Jolie's unpredictable inner fire to make her truly interesting and exciting.
**
Elektra
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Terence Stamp, Kirsten Prout, Gore Visnjic.
Rated: PG-13, contains violence.
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