My friend has "connections" so he got us 2 tickets for an advanced screening of Elektra on Thursday night.
The reviews have been bad. And if the rather skimpy turn out at the KROQ and Fox Studio sponsored pre-screening is an indication, the film could be on its way to video pretty soon.
The insta-review: 2 stars out of 4. I suspect because I'm not terribly objective about Jennifer Garner I give it a marginal thumbs up.
For an action film, the pacing is somewhat uneven.
As for drama, the character development is fairly miminal though we are given some details about Elektra's past and current "issues" that make her a bit more than 2-dimensional but not much more.
I only have vague memories of Daredevil where we were introduced to Garner's Elektra who was quite likable. In this film, we see a much more conflicted and darker character who I was beginning to wonder if I could root for. If it weren't for my favorable feelings towards Garner I might have given up on the film.
The film looked like a TV movie and not really a big screen eye-popper. The visual effects aren't bad but not spectacular and the locales for the shoots don't look all that exotic. The martial arts fight sequences were okay but relied on much fast cut editing and cliche slo-mo. All of these factors in my mind means the studio was hedging its bets trying to keep the budget down.
Why am I giving it a marginal thumbs up?
Two things:
(1) Jennifer Garner
(2) Garner's character having to make some hard choices.
She looks great (of course!) and her dog gone likeability manages to survive (barely) with what little she is given to work with.
As for Elektra's choices... I was willing to buy into the situation though some of how those situations arise remains a little murky to me.
Check out the Official Elektra web page for more hype about the film.
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