cinemajesty Movie Review: "Elektra" (2005)The 2005 released comic action movie "Elektra" directed by Rob Bowman, known for "The X-Files" (1998) and "Reign of Fire" (2002), delivers with a cool stylish hand of direction due to a highly disciplined and fully trained actress Jennifer Garner to a 90 minutes assassin / ninja skilled picture that in retrospective will entertain the knowledgeable genre fans with beautiful cinematic martial arts scenes of light and shadow embedded costume and production design worth a mid-range budget of 43 Million U.S. Dollars.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

Eric Stevenson Before the most recent "Fantastic Four" movie, this was the lowest rated movie based on a Marvel comic on RottenTomatoes and it certainly shows. As someone who was disappointed by "Daredevil" I never had high hopes for this film. I guess it wasn't really offensive or anything, but it's still really bad. There's just so many dumb things in this. Elektra didn't even show up in her uniform until the last fourth of the movie! Again, "Power Rangers" did this better. The special effects with the CGI are really bad in this and the villains are just laughable.From the very get go, the story is dumb. The villain is apparently unaware that Elektra knows what it's like to die, even though he just said she came back! She ends up falling in love this one guy and there's absolutely no buildup to it at all and it's such poorly written romance. I feel bad for female comic book fans seeing as how there has yet to be a decent movie starring a female superhero. I don't have much hopes for "Wonder Woman". There are these weird scenes where she keeps hallucinating a girl changing her age or her own age or I don't know, I didn't care. *1/2

Python Hyena Elektra (2005): Dir: Rob Bowman / Cast: Jennifer Garner, Terence Stamp, Goran Visnjic, Kirsten Prout, Will Yun Lee: Candy coated crap with only lavish production to gaze at. Elektra is a female assassin assigned to protect a father and daughter duo from a group called the Hand. These guys are bad. They are the kind of baddies who stole lunch money from smaller kids at school. Now they have demonic powers and Elektra finds it very difficult to perform her gift of ass kicking. The girl she is protecting is embarrassing especially when she leaps into action with powers of her own. Puh-lease! Director Rob Bowman makes things stylish while the screenwriter basically wrote what any kindergarten major would come up with. Jennifer Garner looks hot in her Elektra outfit but she is really there just to fight. She provides no personality to the role, and Terence Stamp is her blind mentor must have been so if he signed onto this project. Also featured in less than stellar performances are Goran Visnjic, Kirsten Prout and Will Yun Lee who will no doubt cross their agents off their Christmas giving list. While the special effects are passable, the film is about as suspenseful as an episode of Sesame Street. It is hardly a major comic book and its adaptation is among the worst of the lot. It was bad enough that she was featured in Daredevil. This is a pointless comic book crap that is less than electrifying. Score: 3 / 10

Adam Foidart Move over "Ghostrider"; "Elektra" is now the worst Marvel movie to come out of the 2000's. It's a total disappointment on every single level and even if you're a hardcore fan of the character from the comic books, there is no way you will be able to forgive the slew of continuous cinematic sins this movie brings to your screen.If you remember the end of "Daredevil", our titular character (played by Jennifer Garner) had been killed, much to our hero's chagrin. Just before the credits, there were hints that maybe she wasn't dead, despite the fact that she got a sai (those swords she wields) through her chest. Even if you don't remember any of that stuff, it doesn't really matter because this picture has little, if anything to do with that first movie. Elektra is now a crazy ninja assassin who is "deep" because she feels no remorse about killing people and does so a bit excessively; or sometimes doesn't. After being sent to assassinate a man (Goran Visnjic as Mark) and his teenage daughter (Kirsten Prout as Abby) Elektra decides to toss out her assignment and protect them from the evil clan of ninjas called "The Hand" instead.I had an epiphany during this movie. It made me realize why this, and other notoriously poor comic book movies like "Ghost Rider" and "Catwoman" suck so much. It's because they have totally lame villains. Let's say you were making a Batman movie. Who would you have him pitted against? Would it be villains that no one has ever heard of, that even comic book fans don't care about like "Chemical King", "Hellhound", "Killshot" and "Rip Roar"? No way! Not in a million years! What you would do is pick one, maybe two and make sure they're some of the most interesting, most iconic criminals in Gotham City. Guys like The Joker, or Two-Face, or Bane. Characters that couldn't possibly be mistaken for anyone else, have a ton of personality and feel like genuine threats because their reputation precedes them. With that in mind, who is Elektra pitted against in this story? A bunch of no-name, Z-grade baddies that are totals chumps and that no one will ever remember, or care about. We have Boob lady, who can make stuff decay, sometimes; Big black guy who is bullet proof and strong; their boss who has generic ninja powers and a guy with killer tattoos (he's actually kind of cool admittedly). After doing a bit of research, I realized that these characters, which are about as appealing as the popcorn you find under your seat cushions are actually previously established characters from the Marvel universe. Boob lady (Natassia Malthe) is Typhoid, the strong guy (Bob Sapp) is Stone, their leader (Will Yun Lee) is Kirigi and some of the other characters introduced throughout include Stick, and some ninja clans that fans of Daredevil and Elektra will recognize.The problem is that none of these villains have powers that feel original. We've seen strong guys before; we've seen people that can make people go moldy before. If not in other superhero movies, then in generic action films that require a supernatural villain (which is what this feels like). I did think that at least one of the villains in this film was cool, which was Tattoo (Chris Ackerman). Basically he can bring the ink on his body to life to spy on people with spiders, or birds or even use them offensively by unleashing the wolf or snake tattoos. Even then though, this character never really feels like a genuine threat because he doesn't use his powers in any inventive ways and when he goes down, you'll go "wait, that's it?!" Notice how little I've actually talked about the movie? That's because "Elektra" is about as generic as it gets. Jennifer Garner jumps around in a sexy outfit looking tough, nobody uses guns because guns are too effective in terms of assassinating people, you get your teenage sidekick, characters that make idiotic decisions so that we can have action sequences, and the acting is lousy. In terms of performances, the worst offender has to be Terence Stamp as Stick. He's supposed to be blind, but you couldn't tell from the way he's always looking at the person he's talking to. It's like they didn't even try to make it convincing! This film only lasts a little bit over an hour and a half and it felt like it was taking forever to conclude. There is nothing interesting going on here. Even the combat sequences couldn't jar me out of my state of nearly-dead-out-of-boredom because the villains suck and the way they're taken down isn't interesting. It doesn't make Elektra look good when she effortlessly takes down a slew of stereotypical black-clad ninjas, it just makes these shinobi look like a bunch of pajama-wearing losers. If you can't predict where this plot is going, by the way you haven't seen any action movies because this doesn't feel like a superhero or comic book movie at all. They don't even refer to Daredevil or anything! This movie is clearly as sequel-spin off of the Ben Affleck flick (whose "Director's Cut" is solid and very enjoyable) but the only hint of this is an afterthought during the first five minutes of the running time.At least "Ghost Rider" had some cool visuals, with Johnny Blaze running around with a flaming skull for a head. This movie has got absolutely nothing to offer. None of the characters are compelling, none of the action is exciting, none of the writing is original. Even if you were the world's biggest Elektra fan, I can assure you that this is not a worthy representation of her comic book iterations. I can't think of anyone I could recommend it to, but it didn't offend me so I can't quite give it a zero rating. It's close though. (Director's Cut on Blu-ray, March 28, 2015)