Tag: 2005

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

  By

★★★
“Patience is required, but decent fun when it gets going.”

Just imagine Jennifer Aniston watching this film: every time Ange appears on the screen, or gazes lovingly at Brad, Jen shrieks maniacally, “Die, sluuuuuut!” Such thoughts will keep you entertained during the sluggish first hour – you’ll need them, while you wait for the characters to realise what we know from the start: Mr. and Mrs. Smith are both assassins, now targeted by their respective agencies. For that is when the fun finally starts, not the overlong lead-up, where Brad + Angelina can only sustain the plot’s conceit (that – tee-hee! – they don’t know each other’s real jobs) by abject stupidity that flies directly in the face of their characters. She’s supposedly a top-level assassin with 300+ kills to her name, yet doesn’t notice hubby’s Batman-sized lair beneath the potting shed? Puh-lease…

But, must say, I enjoyed the action, which is directed with imagination – for example, Jolie abseiling down a building using only her handbag, provoking a rare “Wow!” from this jaded fan. Jolie is just right: it’s difficult to imagine the other options (Kidman, Zeta-Jones, Blanchett and, um, Gwen Stefani) doing as well. And the sniping banter between husband and wife has a particularly enjoyable sense of irony when its punctuated by… er, actual sniping. Some might say this both glorifies and trivializes the whole issue of domestic violence – and watching them brawl their way round the house before, naturally, tearing each other’s clothes off, it’s hard to argue. Yet at its best, this takes the “War of the Sexes” to a whole new level (she works for an agency that’s mostly women; he, for one that’s largely guys), and that angle could certainly merit more exploration.

We don’t know whether the Smiths are “good”, “bad” or independent contractors, an interesting approach (we have no moral compass beyond their actions), yet disappointing. For another weakness is that the villains are merely faceless minions, when the genre needs a Big Bad for the climax – the obvious one here is the people that ordered the terminations. Liman, whose Bourne Identity was also about a killer with a contract on his head, might appreciate this more than most, and word is two such endings were shot, just not used. Still, I suspect that the sequel – likely inevitable, given this was one of 2005’s top ten at the US box-office – could very well be more fun than the original. At least we’ll have all the tedious set-up out of the way.

Dir: Doug Liman
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Vince Vaughn, Kerry Washington

Bloodrayne

  By

★★½
“Don’t belief the hype: it’s not that bad.”

Director Boll has a rep as the worst filmmaker ever, making movies based on video games entirely for tax writeoff purposes. But have things got out of hand? I mean, Bloodrayne was in the IMDB All-time Bottom 50 before it opened. So cut him some slack – even though we may be the only folk on this planet who admit to liking bits of House of the Dead. Still, despite a fine cast [any film with Udo Kier is okay by us!], uniformly dire reviews meant we went in to this with low expectations – and made up most of the audience. Ouch. Yet, despite rumours of Madsen being drunk every day, Kingsley refusing to act with Madsen – something leftover from Species, I guess – and Rodriguez’ horrendous attempt at an English accent, this wasn’t entirely terrible.

Not great, sure; but as someone from Britain, I knew right off Rodriguez wasn’t even trying. I think all she did was limit her normal accent – wise for a Hispanic in a setting of Romania, circa 1700. Anyway, she and Madsen are hunting down Rayne (Loken), a human/vampire halfbreed seeking king of the vampires Kagan (Kingsley), who raped and killed her mother. Kagan, in turn, is after three artifacts to protect him from water, crosses and sunlight. Basically, imagine a period take on Blade with less actual imagination and more digital blood. There is certainly potential; Loken looks the part (dig her groovy swords!), as does the landscape.

However, the action borders on the incoherent, provoking little or no sense of awe or excitement. Gossip also states most of the stars signed on about two weeks’ notice, and that would certainly explain their apparent large unfamiliarity with pointy weapons. From the reviews, you’d think this was worse than Plan 9 From Outer Space, yet ignoring the anti-Boll hype, it’s largely only the poor staging of the fights which prevent this from being, at the very least, a credible rental. However, an action film with bad action is like a horror film with bad scares, rendering the other ingredients largely irrelevant.

Dir: Uwe Boll
Stars: Kristina Loken, Michael Madsen, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Rodriguez

Painkiller Jane (pilot)

  By

★★
“It’ll probably be the audience who need the painkillers to get through this tedious tale.”

This SciFi Channel original movie is based on a comic-book series, but makes some radical changes to the storyline, though the basic idea is intact: a woman becomes immune to injury after the usual mysterious something happens to her [radioactive spider bite, barrel of toxic waste – the usual graphic novel contrivances, in other words]. In the comic, she was an undercover cop; here, she is a Special Forces soldier in Chechnya who is exposed to an experimental biological agent. Naturally, she subsequently finds herself much sought after, by both good and bad factions, since she’s the first to survive the treatment.

And initially, this isn’t so bad, as she escapes from the military, encounters a gentlemen thief and his posse of sidekicks, and tries to get all her mental ducks in a row, so she knows who to trust. As a set-up, it’s fine, with its share of paranoia. However, the longer this goes on, the less interesting it gets: you’d think having a heroine who is virtually immortal, would lead to almost non-stop mayhem. Not here. The action here is very limited and when it does appear, is simply boring – unfortunately, there’s no other word for it.

Now, I know this was intended as much as a pilot for a project TV series as anything, and they have to keep their powder dry for future episodes. But unlike, say, Chameleon, there’s precious little here to make me want to watch, should they decide to bring it back. Indeed, I fell asleep as the “gripping” scene at a shopping mall unfolded. For any action film, that’s about the kiss of death, and while the performances aren’t bad – Vaugier as our heroine has a nice attitude that reminded me of Yancy Butler in Witchblade – there wasn’t nearly enough meat on these bones to satisfy me…

Dir: Sanford Bookstaver
Star: Emmanuelle Vaugier, Tate Donovan, Richard Roundtree, Eric Dane

Blood Angels

  By

★★★
“Charlie’s Angels take on The Vampire Lestat. At Coyote Ugly.”

I’ve recently seen movies involving vampires who run a strip-club (Vamps), and witches who run a strip-club (Witches’ Sabbath). Now, we have vampires who’re putting on a rave. It’s nice to see creatures of the night who keep themselves busy. Actually, here, they’re not fully-fledged vampires: indeed, the aim of the rave is a ritual to complete the job, give them shape-shifting powers, etc. – generally, upgrade from the shareware version of vampirism. Of course, one of the vamps has a sister (Baruc) turn up – she looks like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, which is fairly appropriate, as she’s definitely not in Kansas any more. And their creator, Mr. Jones (Lamas), from whom they escaped, is keen to reel them back in…

Oh, did I mention the bloodsuckers are all attractive women, and that for some reason, vampirism now includes kung-fu abilities? [Must be v2.0…] Okay, these rarely rise above “fairly crap”, but the attitude is cool, and it’s just another facet of an odd film that also includes: a Japanese guy who wants to be black, an unfunny transvestite, the Necronomicon, a Hunter S. Thompson lookalike and a final five minutes – before the final credits – which are a hip-hop music video. Bizarrely, it largely works, in a post-Buffy kind of way, with a few lines which made us laugh out loud, such as, “I’m sorry to interrupt this very special episode of Touched by a Vampire.” However, whenever the effects go above the basic level…if a script has snakes leap out of a vampire woman’s breasts and attack someone, or a world-threatening demon, your FX studio had better be able to step up to the plate, rather than fall apart.

While expecting copious nudity – “Lesbian Vampire Spank Inferno”, as Chris put it – there is surprisingly little: like the attacking breasts, perhaps a side effect of having a gay director? Looking back, there were more topless guys than gals, but at least it wasn’t an outright gayfest like David DeCoteau would’ve done. However, I imagine, say, Fred Olen Ray would have had a different vision! Co-writer Lisa Morton also basically disowned it, but while this may be light-years from her concept (the original title presumably went, because no-one had a clue what it meant), this is still more fun than anticipated.

Dir: Ron Oliver
Star: Siri Baruc, Leah Cairns, Lorenzo Lamas, Shawn Roberts

Æon Flux (live-action)

  By

★★★
“For Flux’s sake…”

aeonflux14.jpgIt is too early to start speculating about a girlswithguns.org curse? I mean, we’ve only ever put two banners for movies on our home-page: the first was Catwoman which ended up getting Razzie nominations across the board, and now we have Æon Flux, a film deemed so bad by its studio, they decided not to show it to critics. And given some of the other dreck put out by Paramount this year, with a full promotional push…the results were probably inevitable.

For, y’see, many “proper” critics do not like being deprived of their free screenings with reserved seating, and being made to pay $9 to see the movies with (ugh!) a proper audience. I strongly suspect a significant number phoned in their review without bothering to see see – or, at least, pay attention to – the film, under oh-so-“witty” titles like “Flux Sux”. If the studio basically tells you a movie blows, why argue? [It takes phenomenal guts to go against the tide, but Flux did get some good reviews]

Truth is, of course, it’s not as bad as they’d have you imagine. Not brilliant, sure, but worse films come out, almost any weekend. I’m always happy to see a nicely-detailed take on the shape of things to come, and Flux certainly delivers there, with a Brave New World-like utopia, where everyone is happy…at least on the surface. Of course, if you’re familiar with the excellent Equilibrium, you’ve seen this kind of thing before – but say what you like about the Nazis, they had some great architects, and the same is true here. Particular kudos also to costume designer Beatrix Aruna Pasztor, who deserves an Oscar nomination for her efforts, which have a sleek, futuristic style to them that’s undeniably impressive.

Theron also has the necessary gravitas for the role, and to my ears, even sounded like the character did. She has the tall, spindly appearance too, though the hair is definitely well wide of the mark, and her clothes are – inevitably – toned down from the “fetish wear on amphetamines” depicted in the series. That’s probably a necessity for the PG-13 rating, which also hampers the film in other ways – I’ll say more on that later. But as an adaptation in general, it’s so wide of the mark, you’d be better off ignoring this aspect entirely.

 However, it would probably have been foolish to expect otherwise. Given the dense, impenetrable nature of the series, there’s no way a studio was going to spend $60m to make something like that, to open on 2,000+ screens across America. The storyline here is much more linear, logical…and, well, probably less interesting. 400 years after a virus wipes out 99% of the world’s population, Æon is a Monican rebel, fighting the powers-that-be in Bregna, the only city left. However, when her sister is killed by the authorities, it becomes personal, and she takes on a mission to kill Trevor Goodchild (Csokas). However, when she faces him, she finds herself unable to complete her task, and from there she discovers that life is not quite what it seems. Though the revelations are more likely to provoke a shrug than any actual surprise.

aeonflux1.jpgThe main problem, however, is Karyn Kusama, whose previous work, Girlfight was very good, but was an up-close and personal character study, about as far from the sprawling SF sensibility require here as imaginable. This, I think, summarizes part of the problem with Hollywood and “girls with guns”: they appear to think all action heroines are the same. Hey, you did a film about an inner-city schoolgirl who uses boxing as an escape valve? You’d be perfect to helm an effects-packed, post-apocalyptic, science-fiction movie starring a supermodel gone berserk! No. No. A thousand times no. They should perhaps have gone with producer Gale Anne Hurd, who does at least have an action/SF background, from her work on the Terminator series, Aliens, Hulk, etc. Kusuma seems out of her depth, sad to say.

aeonflux4.jpgThere is some inspired gadgetry, such as Æon’s little explosive balls, which do tricks on command, and her eye, which can see chemical additives in a glass of water. There is also what is presumably a VR implant, letting her enter the 25th century version of a chat-room to get orders from McDormand. The hair-do on Æon’s boss is from the “through a hedge backwards” school of hairdressing, so it appears that customizable avatars were also wiped out by the pandemic. But like most of the costumes and set design, the futuristic infrastructure is generally well-realised.

The supporting cast come off variably well. Okenodo (left) plays another rebel, with hands in place of her feet, a nice touch that deserved better exploration. “I like my shoes” is Æon’s response when asked why she doesn’t get the same surgery – that’s the kind of perfect, cool, cast-off line the film needs more of. Csokas, and Miller as his ambitious brother who will do anything to keep the status-quo, are solid; but McDormand and Pete Postlethwaite are both badly wasted in throwaway roles, the latter dressed to look embarrassingly like, as one review put it, a Hot Pocket.

Then there’s the action. Save the final battle, which actually reaches the giddy body-count levels beloved of the animated series, they’re poorly-edited – second-unit director Alexander Witt helmed Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which has exactly the same problem. You’ve got a heroine to whom calm, athletic poise is apparently second nature: why not show her for longer than two frames, without cutting somewhere else? Hell, Theron got injured making this – not that you could tell by the time this went through the MTV blender. As a result, the fights pose no threat to the heroine, since you haven’t got a clue what’s going on: your average video-game causes more concern for the participants.

This brings me back to that PG13-rating, which means the violence doesn’t have any edge to it – at one point, Trevor Goodchild takes two bullets to the torso, and it barely slows him down. In the animated series, death was an ever-present occupational hazard for Æon, and the result had a dark, tough feel that is very much missing here. Instead, the tone is indistinguishable from any other heroic SF. The sexual tension is also much reduced – though keep an eye out for Theron’s real-life squeeze, Stuart Townsend, who cameos in the opening scene, passing a message with his tongue to our heroine. That, and Æon trapping a fly with her eyelash, are about the only moments truly recognisable from the series – and, truth be told, largely prove only that some things work better in animation.

That’s a fitting summary for the film as a whole. This is not the disaster you might expect from some reviews (hell, it’s a million times better than what we watched the next night, the woeful and inept National Treasure, which somehow managed to become a smash-hit). However, there’s no denying that this is a disappointing conversion of a classic series. Its failure at the box-office puts the final nail in a very mediocre year for the action heroine at the box-office, that staggered from bad to worse: Elektra. Domino. Æon Flux. Shudder. We’ll move rapidly on, and raise a glass of Christmas cheer, in the hope that our favourite genre finds some better success in 2006. When’s Underworld: Evolution out?

Dir: Karyn Kusama
Stars: Charlise Theron, Marton Csokas, Johnny Lee Miller, Sophie Okonedo
a.k.a. Aeon Flux

"Not the disaster you might expect from some reviews. However, there's no denying that this is a disappointing conversion of a classic series."
aeonflux1
aeonflux2
aeonflux3
aeonflux4
aeonflux5
aeonflux6
aeonflux7
aeonflux8
aeonflux9
aeonflux10
aeonflux11
aeonflux12
aeonflux13

Azumi 2: Death or Love

  By

★★★★
“Not quite up to the original, but a damn fine “stab”, hohoho.”

I went into this with low expectations, based on some scathing reviews and the lack of Ryuhei Kitamura, whose directorial style made the first such a joy. I’m pleased to report then, that this surpassed expectations, with some nice imagination and a bevy of action heroines (including Kuriyama, whom you’ll know as Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill, Volume 1), as well as the expected high body-count. It follows on loosely from the original, but heads in a slightly different direction; our heroine is still intent on her mission, but is diverted by a wandering samurai, part of a rogue gang, who reminds her of Nachi, her childhood friend she had to kill at the opening of the original film.

Meanwhile, her target has an entire set of ninjas at his beck and call, such as a spider-guy who weaves lethally sharp webs, and a man with a very sharp, double-ended spear (with boomerang capability!), all overseen by a woman whose armour has a chain dangling – for no apparent reason – between the nipples. [This was written by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, who gave us the anime Ninja Scroll, and much of the same sensibility towards extreme violence is on view here, although the chain is the sole nod to that one’s, ahem, interesting view of female sexuality] All of whom must, naturally, face Azumi, before the inevitable finale in which our heroine takes on an entire army, then go one-on-one with its leader.

Merchandising genius: you can even get a somewhat-peeved looking Azumi Kitty…

The action is probably the main area that isn’t quite up to par with the original; Ueto’s shortcomings aren’t as well-covered up, and while Kaneko is a competent director, he isn’t Kitamura – though who is? But this is also about half-an-hour shorter than the original, which had a lot more slack; that’s still somewhat of a problem here, though never for long, and the same bleak tone is apparent, with the final shot showing Azumi being followed by a literal, and apt, river of blood. I suspect any disappointment is largely because the first film was such a blast: when taken on almost any other terms (and, certainly, on its own merits), this is still a cut above (hohoho, once more!), and highly entertaining.

Dir: Shusuke Kaneko
Star: Aya Ueto, Yuma Ishigaki, Chiaki Kuriyama, Shun Oguri

She’s On Duty

  By

★★★
“Cinematic candy-floss; hardly memorable, but pleasant enough.”

This frothy concoction is light-hearted entertainment, which doesn’t exactly pack much of a wallop, but has some nice characters and situations. Heroine Chun (Kim), is a young cop, galled when her undercover mission is swept away by a rival; she gets another chance, but to her dismay, this involves going back to school to watch the daughter (Nam) of a gang member who has agreed to testify against his boss, but has since vanished. Of course, a hot-tempered cop with martial arts skills fits perfectly into a Korean educational establishment, as anyone who has seen Volcano High will know…

Actually, though, this is closer in tone to My Wife is Gangster in its “fish out of water” story – another close cousin would be Stephen Chow’s Fight Back To School series. You could probably reel off the plot elements before watching it. Chun takes on the local tough girl (right), is attracted to another pupil (Gong), and finds her mission in peril when the previous nemesis also turns up, as a “teacher” at the school. Dealing with all this, while still keeping her cover intact, is an interesting challenge – not least when her teacher finds her drinking in a bar, and a classmate thinks she moonlights as a call-girl.

For a 115-minute film, this moves by effortlessly enough, but one can’t help thinking of the missed opportunities here. For example, her battle against the school bad girls is shown only in lead-up and aftermath, proof that the film’s interests lie in the comedic more than the action arena. That’s a bit of a shame, because in the two main set-pieces, which bookend the film, Kim shows some nicely balletic grace – as well as pulling some excellent faces throughout the movie. It’s all entirely unthreatening, but is well put-together, and you won’t feel like you’ve wasted your time by watching this.

Dir: K.C. Park
Star: Kim Seon-Ah, Gong Yoo, Nam Sang-Mi, Park Sang-Myeon

Alias: season four

  By

★★★
“Fourth verse – same as the first.”

Poor Alias. Shunted from its Sunday slot to make way for Desperate Housewives – which proved successful beyond SD-6’s wildest dreams – this season felt as if JJ Abrams was more devoted to his second child, Lost (again, the owner of bigger ratings). By the end of the season it was Sydney, Jack, and their associates who found themselves both lost and somewhat desperate in TV-land, despite much-improved viewing figures – largely a result of following Lost, which got about 30% more audience.

Replacing the arcane beauty of Rambaldi and complex plans from the middle ages, was what seemed like an endless string of long-lost relatives and associates from the more recent past. Careless of Sydney to lose all these, wasn’t it? And somehow we went back to Season One: Sloan running operations, with Sydney sure he’s up to no good somehow. Abrams said it was a return to the core concept of the show, but it felt more like a shortage of ideas.

Not to say there weren’t moments; most tied to Sonia Braga, Isabella Rossellini and Lena Olin, a triumphant trio of femmes fatales whose scheming reached Shakespearean levels. [spoilers!] Sophia framed Irina for putting a hit on Sydney, and got ex-husband Jack to shoot Irina – only, was it really her? [end spoilers] In lesser hands, this could have been one step above “and it was all a dream”; these three magnificent actresses undoubtedly saved the day.

What the series lacked was any real enemy for Sydney, up until the later episodes. Anna Espinosa made a welcome return, but the show felt like it was marking time at best, with a final “twist” that seemed to have been made up at the last minute, and showed little evidence of advance thought. Plus, all the action scenes continue to be infected with the jump-cut editing that made it impossible to tell what is going on.

There was, however, just enough to keep us around for season five. Perhaps the biggest surprise – and the one with most potential – was the deft touch showed by Garner behind the camera; the episode she directed was one of the series highlights. Given the disappointments which have been her movies to date, might this show a possible direction for her future career?

Star: Jennifer Garner, Michael Vartan, Victor Garber, Ron Rifkin

The Lost Angel

  By

★★
“If Dirty Harry had a daughter…with issues.”

The daughter of Clint does her best in this police thriller but, despite one decent twist, and a couple of half-decent scenes, this collapses under the weight of too familiar a storyline and some rampant overacting. Inspector Billie Palmer (Eastwood) is assigned to catch a killer who has promised a victim a day for 20 days, and is living up to their promise. Events centre around a local deaf priest (Rhys-Davies), but she also must deal with a disgruntled suspect whom she shot, a traumatic incident in her past, and a suspiciously knowledgeable informant. Oh, and a laughably gratuitous sex scene that appears out of nowhere, 80 minutes in.

It’s as if the film-makers didn’t believe any single thread would hold our interest, and decided instead to shovel them on without real logic – hey, if you don’t like this plot, don’t worry, there’ll be another one along in a minute. Which is a shame, since a couple of the ideas have potential, and if better developed, could have made for a decent movie. However, there’s no way any police officer, special crimes or not, would get away with behaving the way Palmer does; in particular, her method of interrogating Goth red herring, C.Thomas Howell (chewing every bit of scenery within reach), is not in the manual, except perhaps at Club Lapdance.

Despite this, ah, no-nonsense approach, which extends to most aspects of her detective work, there’s a reason this one has been sitting on the shelf for the past couple of years. Eastwood does have some of her father’s presence, but needs to make a significantly better choice of material if she is to reach the same level of stardom.

[This film was released by MTI on DVD, April 26th – for more details, visit their website]

Dir: Dimitri Logothetis
Star: Alison Eastwood, Nickolas Celozzi II, Judd Nelson, John Rhys-Davies

Elektra

  By

★★½
“Sai It Ain’t So…”

True story. A friend of ours has a job as an intern in Los Angeles, and coming round the corner at work one day, he literally bumped into Jennifer Garner. He immediately started apologising profusely (he’s an uber-nice kid, who wouldn’t say “Boo!” to a fly) but she wouldn’t have any of it and began cursing him out in the nastiest of ways. Garner finally stalked off, while he continued to apologise – just before vanishing, she turned round and gave him the finger. So now we know: Jennifer Garner = bitch.

Despite this, it gives me no real pleasure to report on the failings of Elektra. It was a pleasant surprise, and says a fair bit about Daredevil, that the studio chose to pursue her character as a spinoff, rather than following up with a sequel. I hoped that they’d do a good job, capturing the dark passions and conflicts of the character, whose incarnation in works like Frank Miller’s Elektra: Assassin is truly memorable. [Interestingly, the screening was preceded by a trailer for another Miller adaptation, Sin City, which looks at least stylistically accurate] Unfortunately, what we have here is another shallow dumbing-down, offering little more than another straightforward good vs. evil battle.

The first issue is, of course, that Elektra died in Daredevil. No problem: we have a Yoda-like character, Stick (Terence Stamp), who can bring characters back from the grave. Yet this causes more problems than it solves: sure, Elektra’s back, but now, death, where is thy sting? Any threat to life is now no more inconvenient than in a video game: press X to continue. Anyway, after getting booted from Stick’s training camp in her second life, Elektra becomes a freelance assassin. However, when assigned to target a father (Visnjic, who remains miraculously just stubbly throughout) and his 13-year old daughter, Abigail (Prout), she suddenly has second thoughts.

This is kinda fortunate, since the pair turn out to be lynchpins in a battle between good (Stick and his allies) and evil. The latter are a group called The Hand, led by villain Roshi (veteran Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa, from Mortal Kombat), who sends his son Kirigi (Lee) and his interesting-ability acolytes after Elektra and her wards. They can do stuff like make their tattooes come to life, kill things with a touch, or withstand shotgun blasts. Poor Elektra is just very, very good with weapons, which comes across as rather weak in comparison.

The aim is clearly to put Elektra across as an emotionally-scarred individual, who connects with Abigail, seeing herself in the teenager, and has enough baggage for an entire convention of shrinks. However, all we get in terms of her psychology are some clumsy flashbacks and a touch of pointless OCD which feels like it strayed in from Monk. Even after her agent (Colin Cunningham) both offers the trio shelter, then bravely stays behind to give them time to escape, his sacrifices don’t merit the slightest subsequent mention. Superheroes: they’re just so damn ungrateful.

There is entertainment, mostly lurking in the background. A moment with impact sees Typhoid (Natassia Malthe), the girl with the poison touch, kiss Elektra; the pair fall to the ground surrounded by a shower of dying leaves. It feels almost like it could have been inspired by the work of Zhang Yimou (House of Flying Daggers), and is at least less obviously stolen than the “House of Flying Bed-Sheets” battle later on. It’s also interesting to see Mark Houghton as a chief bodyguard in the opening scene: he made his debut against Yukari Oshima in The Outlaw Brothers, back in 1987.

The fight scenes are actually pretty good too, though the editing occasionally borders on the incoherent, and there just aren’t enough of them. What about Roshi? After sending out his son, he vanishes entirely from the picture, leaving the result disappointingly like a Bond film where 007 never gets to meet Blofeld, and is left dispatching minions instead. I guess they were perhaps hoping to save that confrontation for a sequel, but having just seen the first week’s box-office returns (Elektra took in several million dollars less than Catwoman), doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon.

 In terms of quality, this is probably about the same as the recent version of The Punisher, and that started from a lower point, the comics adapted there being basically a hyperviolent revenge fantasy for teenage boys. Frank Miller’s work on Elektra was truly for mature readers – in both the sense that its intricacies require a sophisticated mind to unpick, and the intense nature of its images. Instead, we get this PG-13 rated Elektra, that simply rolls out the usual comic-book cliches without sufficient enthusiasm or invention. It’s polished until the surface positively gleams, but is just a thin layer of precious gold, over a heart of basest metal.

We should have guessed: January is a bad time to release an action movie, and Garner’s absence from publicity (allegedly due to a viral infection or “nerve damage” – though that’s actually what our intern friend suffered at her hands) was another warning-sign. So was the fact Daredevil wasn’t that good. Regardless, it doesn’t bode well for a year where adaptations of comic-books come thick and fast, with February’s Constantine next. And after the failure of Catwoman, it unfortunately seems to be strike two for big-budget action heroines.

Dir: Rob Bowman
Stars: Jennifer Garner, Will Yun Lee, Kirsten Prout, Goran Visnjic