First, some background information. Rob Bowman's Elektra is based on the popular character created by Frank Miller which originally appeared in an issue of Daredevil published by Marvel Comics. She proved a pretty popular supporting character - sexy, mysterious and an interesting love interest/foil for Marveldom's red suited vigilante, but Miller killed her off not all that long after creating her. She was resurrected in the eighties in the eight issue Elektra: Assassin mini-series and then again in a standalone graphic novel called Elektra: Lives Again which Miller both wrote and lovingly illustrated, and then she was retired again only to be resurrected once again by Marvel, this time without Miller's involvement. This was kind of a big deal to comic fans, as Elektra was definitely best in Miller's hands. Cut to 2003 and Mark Steven Johnson brings Daredevil to the big screen with Elektra, played by Alias star Jennifer Garner, in tow as a primary supporting character. That film did well enough that the sexy assassin was spun off into her own feature, which brings us back to Bowman's film.

So yeah, picking up where Daredevil more or less left off, a resurrected Elektra is out on her own and away from Matt Murdoch's world, we meet up with her when she's tasked with assassinating a man named Mark Miller (Goran Visnjic) and his young daughter Abbey (Kirsten Prout). She takes the mission but soon decides she can't follow through with it, which pisses of the underground organization she has ties with, The Hand, lead by Roshi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). They decide that since Elektra can't do it, the next best thing would be to send in a team of ninjas to take the Miller's out for good. This doesn't work, as Elektra is tough enough to make short work of those guys, which simply serves to further piss off The Hand.

Having had enough, they decide to bring in their 'big gun' in the form of a master assassin named Kirigi (Will Yun Lee) who, along with his cronies, will stop at nothing to kill the father/daughter duo and Elektra too if she should decide to get in his way. As her past starts to catch up with her, Elektra finds herself in the fight for her life - thankfully though, she's not alone, as she has some help in the form of a strange old man named Stick (Terrance Stamp). But will it be enough?

Garner had already proven herself pretty capable of handling action-intensive roles with her work in Alias and she fits into the red leather assassin suit and plays Elektra fairly well in this picture. She's got the right amount of sex appeal and 'don't mess with me' toughness that, when complimented with her smarts and her cold stare make her a good choice for the lead. Terrance Stamp is also well cast as Stick, having a surliness to him that makes his wise ways seem believable enough to work. Sadly, the rest of the cast isn't all that interesting or inspired. The Hand characters are almost instantly forgettable and don't really bring enough sense of menace to the film to really work. Prout and Visnjic are nice enough people from the looks of things but you can't really invest enough in them to care that much.

With an uneven cast, can the film save itself with a great story and impressive action sequences? Well, we do get some impressive action sequences, that much is true. There's some cool martial arts on display here and there's something about a pretty girl with a pair of sai that it just completely great. The story, however, is a bit of a mish mash - the biggest problem being that Elektra just isn't given that much of a reason to care about the Miller's. She's having a change of heart and all at this point in her career but it happens very quickly and not entirely convincingly. On top of that, the movie falls prey to a lot of action movie clichés, from the heavy guitar-riff centric soundtrack to the bad CGI effects work. The story moves back and forth from mysticism to supernaturalism to reality based set pieces rather awkwardly, and it's hard to tell if the film is trying to be taken seriously or not at times simply because it switches tone so frequently and with such disregard for consistency. The result is a very, very uneven film that hits about as often as it misses and unfortunately balances its impressive action sequences and fairly decent lead performance with plentiful bouts of mediocrity.

Note: The version of Elektra contained on this Blu-ray release is Rob Bowman's director's cut of the film. It's three minutes longer than the PG-13 theatrical cut of the film, but without the theatrical cut on hand to compare, it's tough to say what has been added and/or taken out. There's nothing here in this unrated version that would push the film into R-rated territory, however.

Video:

Elektra arrives on Blu-ray in an AVC encoded 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen 1080p high definition transfer. Now, this is a very dark film from the start so you're not going to get the sort of color pop out of the image that you might want but this Blu-ray release does improve on some of the standard definition release's problems, mainly with the encoding. There aren't any problems with compression artifacts or edge enhancement nor is there much shimmering either. That said, shadow detail is still a bit uneven. The black levels are pretty deep, which is definitely a good thing, but there are intermittent scenes where some background detail gets swallowed up. Thankfully skin tones look nice and natural and both texture and detail are a fair bit better than what we had before but still not on par with the best that Blu-ray has to offer. Colors have been tinkered with in this movie and so sometimes certain hues look a bit off and sometimes things look a bit soft, but Elektra's high definition debut will offer a marginal upgrade for fans of the film.