Elektra (PG-13)
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This 2005 movie is a spin-off of the 2003 movie Daredevil. I didn't get around to watching it until 2013. I should mention that, as little as I knew about the character Daredevil before seeing that movie, I knew even less about the character Elektra. (Basically, I knew her name, and had seen some pictures of the comic book character, and that's pretty much it.) So I can't compare the movie to the comics. As for this movie, I knew nothing. I vaguely recall Seth making a joke about it once on The O.C., and I remember reading that it was generally not well-received. So I was a bit apprehensive about seeing it, but I always knew I wanted to. Because I like forming my own opinions. I'll say that for awhile, it seemed slightly boring, but not really bad. But eventually, I thought it got pretty decent. And by the end of the movie, I'd decided that I probably actually liked it slightly better than Daredevil. So if you don't like it... hey, you're entitled to your opinion. But I disagree. (Sort of. It's still possible that the next time I watch Daredevil- which I just watched for the second time the day before I watched this for the first time- I'll decide I like that better than this. Still, there are people who didn't just think it was worse than Daredevil, but really hated it. Those people are definitely wrong.) I also want to mention that there were lots of little things in the movie that reminded me of any number of other movies or shows (mostly of the martial arts variety) that I've seen before (some which came out before this, some after). Which is not to say I think those elements of the movie are rip-offs or even clichés, mind you. I'm just saying... it would take too long to try to list all the things I might want to compare the movie to. So I won't.

Anyway, I don't want to spoil anything about this movie's plot, at least nothing it isn't necessary to tell you to explain what it's about. But I have to start by spoiling something about "Daredevil," which is okay, because it would be foolish of you to watch this movie before watching that one. So you already know... in that movie, Elektra was killed. And yet in this one, she's alive. It seems she was brought back to life by a guy called Stick, who is a master of a kind of martial art called kimagure. It involves the ability to manipulate time, to an extent, which allows for a certain amount of precognition, and for a true master, the ability to bring the dead back to life. (Oh, I led with that, didn't I? Sorry.) Mainly, though it seems to allow for characters to appear to move really fast. Which happens in a lot of martial arts movies that never bother to offer any explanation, so that was a nice change of pace. Anyway, Elektra trained with Stick for awhile, before he kicked her out of his training program. (We see this in a flashback. I'm not sure exactly how long she was with him and his other students, but it couldn't have been too long, since I'm assuming this movie is set roughly around the time it came out, which as I noted, is just a couple years after the original.) In the time since she left Stick, Elektra had somehow gotten herself an "agent" called McCabe, who arranges contracts for her as a hired assassin. And incidentally, while she seemed reasonably bad-ass in the first movie, she obviously took more than one level in bad-ass since then. She's already developed a reputation as being unstoppable.

So, after the initial scene where we see the conclusion of her latest job, McCabe gets her another job. She goes to stay for awhile in a rented lake house, and is supposed to wait a couple of days to find out who her new target is. Meanwhile, she meets a teenage girl named Abby Miller (Kirsten Prout). And she meets Abby's father, Mark. (Abby's mom died a couple years ago.) Abby and Mark seem like decent enough folks (even if Abby has a habit of breaking and entering, and stealing). So in spite of Elektra's attempt to remain aloof, she quickly begins to like them. Predictably enough, she then learns that they are the people she's been hired to kill. She decides not to, and instead protects them from a couple of ninjas who show up to finish the job. Then she takes them to meet Stick, with whom she hopes to leave them. But of course she ends up continuing to protect them, herself.

See, there's this whole ancient battle between good and evil. The bad guys call themselves the Hand, and the good guys are followers of the Way of Kimagure. And the Hand are targeting Abby for a reason I'm not going to spoil. Anyway, the main bad guy in the movie is Kirigi, the son of Master Roshi (the leader of the Hand, and no relation to the Master Roshi from Dragonball). I also want to mention that throughout the film, there are flashbacks to when Elektra was a young girl, and her mother was killed. (Why am I mentioning that at this particular juncture? No reason. Probably.) Um... and Kirigi has a few followers who each have their own special powers. There's a guy named Stone, who basically seems really strong and practically invulnerable, as if he was made of stone (though it doesn't look like he is). There's a guy named Tattoo, whose tattoos of various creatures can come off his body and become sort of demonic versions of the actual creatures. (This is the best power in the movie and has some of the best special effects.) There's a woman named Typhoid, who basically just spreads death to whoever (or whatever) she touches. And a guy named Kinkou, who... well, I never noticed any power, he just seems to be a good fighter, I guess. So of course, they all eventually show up and try to kill Elektra and the Millers.

And that's all I really want to say about the plot. But there are decent fight scenes, decent special effects, and the story's not bad. When we finally learn why the Hand want Abby, there's a neat revelation. And um... I guess the story has some decent personal drama and a little bit of humor. There were things that didn't really make sense (like, is Elektra paying the electricity bills for an old house no one's been living in for years, or what?) But there were some neat touches, and on the whole, I definitely found it to be an enjoyable movie. (And there was a scene between Elektra and Mark, near the end, where I totally knew what they'd say to each other. Almost as if I was a kimagure master!) And I guess that's all I can think to say.