Vanilla. This movie was very vanilla. At no point was I either repulsed nor enthused for this flick. Know that I've made a point of watching any movie that's ever been based on a graphic novel (or a comic book for those of us not wanting to sound condescending) and have liked every project Marvel, the company that has brought us Daredevil, X-Men, and Spider-Man, has come out with these last few years. Compared to these movies though, this story comes up painfully short. 

I liked Daredevil. This could be partly because it was one of the few comics I haven't read before watching the movie, but I don't think that the critics were justified in trying to crush it the way they did. The movie did so poorly, that even though Elektra is the equivelant of a sequel, they made no mention of their ties until a week before its release (they instead said things to the nature of "From the creators of X-men." "From those who brought you Spider-Man.") Unlike movies like X-Men and Spider-Man however, they didn't have the suspense, the creativity or the sheer star power of the others. Where they had Willem Dafoe and Hugh Jackman, this had Jason Isaacs for ten minutes (remember that little blonde snot-nosed kid from the second Harry Potter? Yeah, his dad. Catch me while I swoon over such a celebrity.) and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (who played Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat over a decade ago). 

I wouldn't feel right leaving a review simply with "this movie wasn't any good because it wasn't as good as some others." I just didn't feel the fulfillment usually associated with watching good triumph over evil. I didn't feel for the characters since they never went into any back story about any of them, other than a shot of young Elektra swimming, the villains weren't that evil (there's a scene where someone disappoints the boss in a meeting… and they don't kill him! Blasphemy! It's a cardinal rule that if you disappoint your Asian boss in a martial arts movie, you're automatically executed.), and the fight scenes weren't even that interesting. If anything, they seemed too easily won. 

In short, if you feel the need to watch this movie, go out and rent X-Men, The Punisher, or pretty much anything that Marvel's come out with in the last five years that wasn't The Hulk, and you'll respect yourself more in the morning. 

Nothing's worse than the flop sequel of a flop. 

Dan Cosgrove
d.cosgrove@partyinkingston.com