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BY TOM MEEK
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Jennifer Garner’s comic-book vixen from Daredevil gets promoted from side dish to feature entrée here, but the result doesn’t do the Alias star justice, since the filmmakers simply drop a superhero boilerplate around the pouty aloofness of her Sydney Bristow persona. Like Sydney, Elektra is a conflicted assassin careering about in scanty outfits, but her one-woman wrecking machine is also endowed with the ability to see the near future, move like the wind, and wield some mean cutlery as she tries to keep a gifted prodigy (Kirsten Prout) from falling into wrong hands (a band of transmogrified ninjas named the Hand). In an era of Crouching Tigers, Flying Daggers, and Killed Bills, however, this chintzy hybrid of X-Men and Mortal Kombat doesn’t cut it. Thumbs up when Elektra describes her lethal profession as "layoffs and payroll reductions" and when she slaps a deadly, girl-on-girl kiss on Typhoid (Natassia Malthe). Otherwise, you’re left with stilted dialogue and dark, underlit sets, all limned by director Rob Bowman, who perfected such shtick on The X Files. At the Apple Valley, Entertainment, Flagship, Holiday, Providence Place 16, Showcase, and Tri-Boro cinemas. (96 minutes)
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