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Elektra (Widescreen Edition)

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While 2003's Daredevil was a conventional superhero movie, the 2005 spinoff, Elektra, is more of a wuxia-styled martial arts/fantasy flick. Elektra (Jennifer Garner) has returned to her life as a hired assassin, but she balks at an assignment to kill a single father (Goran Visnjic, ER) and his teenage daughter (Kirsten Prout). That makes her the target of the Hand, an organization of murderous ninjas, scheming corporate types, and a band of stylish supervillains seeking to eliminate Elektra and tip the balance of power in the ongoing battle of good vs. evil.

As the star of Alias, Garner has proven that she can kick butt with the best of them, and some of the visual effects are impressive, but the action sequences tend to be anticlimactic, and there's not much to the story. Fans will notice numerous references to Frank Miller's comic books, but there's very little resemblance to Miller's cold-blooded killer (Elektra with an agent? Elektra referring to herself as a "soccer mom"?).

Is Elektra better than Daredevil? Not really, even with the distinct advantage of having all Garner and no Ben Affleck. That could be the spinoff's greatest disappointment: after Spider-Man 2 raised the bar for comic-book movies, Elektra lowered it back to Daredevil's level. Directed by Rob Bowman (the X-Files movie), and featuring Terence Stamp as the mysterious mentor Stick, Will Yun Lee (Die Another Day) as the chief villain, and NFL-player-turned-mixed-martial-arts-champion Bob Sapp as the immovable Stone.
DVD features
Ben Affleck's much-rumored cameo is one of the deleted scenes on the Elektra DVD. It's a one-minute throwaway, and while he's supposedly appearing as Matt Murdock (who romanced Elektra in Daredevil), the barrage of celebrity gossip makes it impossible to see him as anything other than Jennifer Garner's real-life boyfriend. There's also a making-of featurette, which is mostly promotional hype other than a few interesting effects shots; four editing featurettes; and Jennifer Garner's videotaped message to ComicCon. --David Horiuchi
More on Elektra

Elektra: The Album (Soundtrack CD)

Elektra: The Movie (Comic Adaptation)

Frank Miller Comic Books

Daredevil (Director's Cut) (DVD)

Jennifer Garner stars in Alias (DVD)

More Superhero DVDs

Product Description

Following her death at the hands of Bullseye, Elektra Natchios, hired assassin skilled in the weapon of the sai, is brought back to life by the Order of the Hand, the ninja assassin group that first trained her. Given an order to kill a man and his teenage daughter, Elektra finds that a conscience is detrimental to life as an assassin., ISBN13: B0007P0Y7C ISBN10: B0007P0Y7C Material Type: dvd