Elektra

Comic book movies are everywhere these days, so it can take me a little while to get to some of them. It takes twice as long to get to the ones I really have no interest in seeing, but still check out just because they're comic book movies. With that being said, I finally got around to watching Elektra and, damn, I could have lived my entire life without having done so. It's not that it's out and out painful, no, it's that the movie is completely forgettable.

I stand by the idea that every movie has something redeeming in it and this movie is no different; there is nothing wrong with the acting; the movie is beautiful in appearance; the martial arts are well choreographed and the wire work is believable.

Unfortunately it all falls apart in a story that's rushed and hazy on the details. We're supposed to believe that Elektra, since her death in Daredevil, is a deadly assassin. Fine, but tell me how she made that transition in a coherent way.

You see, when you leave out parts of a story, it makes the overall experience less than believable. The entire movie suffers from this, which is a product of the rushing as well. You run through a ton of details on how and why things are in such a short amount of time that you never focus on one long enough to gain an emotional understanding of why the character is really motivated to do what she's doing.

The villains were cool, in that non-threatening kind of way. Much as The Hand is portrayed in the comics, the ninjas are little more than cannon fodder. Okay that I can expect. It's unfortunate that the four main villains in the movie, who all look really cool and have unique powers, are defeated with little to no effort on Elektra's part.

I'm not really someone who'll review something, find out I dislike it, and then tell you not to watch it, because a person has to make up their own mind when it comes to stuff like this. You might watch this and love it, who knows?

THE DVD:

A forgettable movie gets a forgettable DVD--makes sense. The video is crisp and up to DVD standards, so there are no complaints there; the complaints come when we talk about the extras, where it's obvious the DVD production was just as rushed as the movie! We get three deleted scenes, one of which contains a brief and, once again, completely forgettable and needless scene featuring Ben Affleck reprising his role as Matt Murdock for all of two minutes. I can't imagine how much he was paid to show up for this and then have it cut from the movie. I also have no idea why it was cut from the movie, because it's short enough not to detract from the overall pace of the movie (which is breakneck speed).

There's a weak making-of featurette and a ComicCon presentation. In this, Garner apologizes for being unable to attend the convention and then goes on to speak about the movie; it's short and seemingly also engineered for people with attention spans shorter than midgets cut off at the knees. Rounding out the features for the actual movie is a brief little ditty on comic book artists and such, which is, again, nothing special.

Now, in an odd move, Fox included previews of American Dad and Family Guy. I found it really sad that on the back of the DVD case this is actually advertised under the "Extras" banner. It's just a rather odd place for Fox to whore out its shows.

The bottom line is that none of the extras on this disc are worth a damn, except for The Fantastic Four movie preview! Pretty much anything of interest, having to do with Elektra, can be found on one of the Daredevil DVD releases. Like I said up above, I'll not tell you not to see this movie, that's not my style; however I will tell you not to buy the DVD. If you really want to feel like a fool, you can fork over $20 to me and I'll slug you in the crotch with salami.

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