Elektra

Year of release : 2005

Run time : 1h33m

Genre : Fantasy / Action

Cast : Jennifer Garner, Terence Stamp, Goran Visnjic, Will Yun Lee, Natassia Malthe

The movie is a spin-off of the character Elektra from the Daredevil (2003) movie.

Elektra is based on the Marvel 8 issue comic books written by Frank Miller “Elektra : Assassin” and first published in 1986.

The movie opens with a mark , DeMarco, who talks about Elektra, whom everybody believes to be dead or a myth. Elektra k1lls all the men DeMarco hired to protect him, and then him.

Elektra’s friend and agent comes to see her, as she’s cleaning her place of her DNA, to bring her the money for the job on DeMarco. He tells her about another job, worth 2 million. The contract stipulates she has to spend a few days on the island where the assassination has to take place, before the names of the targets are revealed.

While there, Elektra remembers how she was revived by a blind sensei who trained her to be the best, and then threw her out, although she had nowhere to go, because she was too angry. She also remembers her parents.

She meets a girl who entered her home while she was out swimming, stealing her mother’s neckline. See, that’s the only thing Elektra carries belonging to her mother who was k1lled when she was a child, by something looking like a demon. She still has nightmares about it.

 

Abby’s father,Mark, is looking for her, and Elektra tells him she broke into her home. Later, Abby comes to complain about her telling her father she broke into her place, and invites her to the Christmas dinner on her father’s behalf.

Elektra accepts, and when she gets there she realizes Abby lied about the invitation.

Elektra finally gets the file with the targets. They are Abby and her father. She tries to k1ll them, but she can’t. Trying to leave the island she notices the assassins sent to k1ll them, has a vision about Abby screaming, and goes back for them.

Elektra gets to their place in the nick of time, k1lling the two assassins.

 

On the other side of the world, The Hand, an order who is trying to get their hands on The Treasure, is informed by Kirigi their assassins are dead. The master gives the task to get her to Kirigi and his team of people with supernatural abilities .

Trying to save them, Elektra goes to the sensei asking him to take care of them. Disapproving of her way of living, the sensei is telling them what she does for a living, and Mark admits his wife was k1lled by The Hand, as he refused to give them what they wanted.

The sensei is trying to make her protect them, but she leaves. When they follow her, she sees an eagle which is part of a tattoo belonging to one of the people with special powers from Kirigi’s team, and Elektra takes them with her.

The first time I watched the movie I didn’t like it. I was surprised to see I enjoyed it last night. But, the characters starting with Elektra (speaking of which, I don’t remember if we ever hear her full name), and ending with the villains, are a mystery to the audience. We don’t know much about them.

The movie takes place at Christmas and around Christmas, so I don’t know why wasn’t it released before Christmas. It looks like it’s anything but winter, though. Probably because it was filmed in summer.

I liked the fighting scenes. Speaking of which, it looked like they were looking for a reason to fight all the time, see the scene in which she’s fighting Abby.

And Typhoid Mary. I loved her whole look, with the beautiful dragonfly earrings and snake ring. I think she needed more air time.

I didn’t like the fact Elektra was resurrected by the blind sensei, Stick (the name, honestly!) who could bring people back to life. Movies with characters who come back to life lose me, that’s how Supernatural lost me, because the leads kept on dying and coming back. Abby dies too, and Elektra brings her back because she has superpowers, and it just lost me, I was like “Eff off movie!”

When she resurrects her she says something along the lines of “ you can’t die now when I finally found you!” which was weird to say to a kid, and then she leaves her and her father - although she liked them both - for no reason!

Abby was annoying, I remember hating her the first time I watched the movie. She enters her home and steals her neckline, but she’s acting like it’s the other way around.

Also, when Elektra’s fighting Kirigi she falls with her back/spine against a pole, but she’s fine, she’s not bleeding, didn’t break anything..it’s like she’s invincible, she never bleeds..never looks like she needs help..

I didn’t like Elektra’s red suit.

The treasure is a girl without a mother, able to tip the scale in favor of whoever’s side she’s on, the good or the bad.

The acting was good.

Jason Isaacs has a small role at the beginning of the movie, as Elektra’s mark.

The soundtrack was good.

The visual effects were good.

Elektra holds a critics score of 11% against a 29% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 34 critic score against a 4.2 audience score on Metacritic.

Cinema Score audiences graded the movie a B. IMDB graded it a 4.7.

The movie grossed 57 million dollars against a production budget of about 65 million dollars, making it a flop.

You can watch the movie on the Ok.Ru platform.

Rating : Worth a watch !