ELEKTRA BACK FROM THE DEAD - BUT WHY?

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

THE LAST TIME we saw Jennifer Garner's Elektra, near the end of ``Daredevil,'' she was dead. But in the grand tradition of superhero comics and the movies they inspire, that hasn't stopped her from returning in her own, spanking-new spinoff.

Not that that helps the coherence-challenged ``Elektra'' make sense. The highly trained ninja is supposed to be one of those Batman-like costumed heroes who are supposed to do their thing without the benefit of impossible powers. Yet this movie's Elektra seems capable of teleporting herself through space and time, seeing accurately into the future and, as we mentioned, coming back from the dead.

Which probably wouldn't be that annoying if everything else about the story wasn't an illogical, meandering mess, too. This is somewhat surprising, since one of the screenwriters, Zak Penn, worked on ``X2,'' for my money the best Marvel Comics adaptation ever. Then again, Penn also had a credit on ``Last Action Hero.'' ``Elektra'' is certainly more in that league - minus the steel-trap humor of that woebegone satire.

Anyway, the serious ``Elektra'' finds Garner's buff, blade-hurling babe making her post-resurrection way as an assassin for hire. In a very bad example of story structuring, she spends most of the film's first act sitting around an island vacation house in the Pacific Northwest, waiting for her next assignment. Flashbacks and obsessive-compulsive behavior are supposed to give us insights into her traumatized character. She's battling inner demons as well as outer ones, but it's superficial and it doesn't make up for the lack of action.

Anyway, she finally finds out that she's supposed to kill the spunky preteen Abby (Kirsten Prout) and her hunky widowed father Mark (``ER's'' Goran Visnjic) who are staying down the road. Elektra can't bring herself to do the deed, and soon a bunch of supernaturally powered bad ninjas are after the family - and their new protector, Elektra.

These villains don't have personalities either, but at least they have some interesting powers. Tattoo (Chris Ackerman) can make all the animals etched on his body come to dangerous life. Typhoid (Natassia Malthe) makes every living thing around her deathly ill - which isn't that effective a power against heroines who never really die. Stone (Bob Sapp), is a big, muscle-bound guy on whose rock-hard torso Elektra's signature trident daggers just break off.

Leading the bad guys is Kirigi (Will Yun Lee), heir to the leader of the evil organization The Hand. He and Elektra have a grudge that goes way back, and they duke it out in a weirdly uninvolving, too obviously CG- dependent sequence that could be called House of Flying Bedsheets. Maybe a director of Zhang Yimou's prowess could have made this confrontation visually and emotionally memorable, but ``Elektra'' was directed by ``X-Files'' veteran Rob Bowman, whose last movie was the dragon debacle ``Reign of Fire.'' Like most of the other, stingily distributed action scenes in this movie, it plays lackadaisically.

Terence Stamp cashes a check as Elektra's blind, pool-shark martial arts mentor, Stick. She keeps asking him, ``Is this a test?'' Bored moviegoers might well pose the same question to ``Elektra's'' makers.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

ELEKTRA - One and one half stars

(PG-13: violence, language, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Jennifer Garner, Kirsten Prout, Terence Stamp, Goran Visnjic, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Will Yun Lee.

Director: Rob Bowman.

Running time: 1 hr. 36 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: Garner's ``Daredevil'' heroine is resurrected for slapdash supernatural/martial arts nonsense.

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Photo:

Jennifer Garner brings ``Elektra'' back to life.