Starring: Jennifer Garner (I), Goran Visnjic, Will Yun Lee

4 out of 10 stars: Here are some suggestions for director Rob Bowman:

• If you're making a movie about a mysterious assassin, don't tell us nearly everything about her.
• If you still feel the need to tell us everything about her, please don't do it in recurring flashbacks.
• If you need to do it recurring flashbacks, please don't do them in slow-motion.

Alas, Bowman does all of these and less in Elektra, a movie that takes itself too seriously to be a fun comic-book movie, while not building up enough credibility—in character, in plot, in demeanor, in anything—to make us take it seriously as an action movie.

Elektra (Jennifer Garner) is an assassin-for-hire who is sent to British Columbia to await her next assignment. Perhaps the exchange-rate is more favorable for rubbing someone out there than in the States. While in Canada, she discovers that her target is the spunky next-door neighbor girl, Abby (Kirsten Prout) and her hunky dad, Michael (Goran Visnjic, playing most of his role on the corners of the theater screen). They are wanted dead by The Hand, a mysterious organization that makes its headquarters in the only bamboo and timber high-rise in the modern world. They are led by Roshi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) but he gives the hunting of the father and daughter over to his son, Kirigi (Will Yun Lee). Kirigi leads a band of villains including Stone (who appears to be impervious to bullets), Tatoo (who can conjure up creatures from the body art on his skin), Nameless Guy Who Gets Killed Off Quickly (who gets killed off quickly but makes for an aesthetically appealing balance when a band of villains walks menacingly toward the camera in slow-motion) and Typhoid (who seems to be very proficient at killing plants and only so-so at killing people).

Of course Elektra changes her mind about taking the assassination assignment and helps Michael and Abby escape The Hand instead. They also enlist the aid of Elektra's former sensei Stick (played by the orange, fraternal twin of Terence Stamp), a blind man who knows Elektra better than she knows herself.

But, by the end of this movie, the audience knows Elektra better than she knows herself. We know the pain her mean daddy caused her when he made her tread water in the family pool. How do we know this? We're told in flashback. This isn't a character who needs redemption; it's a character who needs to spend some time in the self-help section of Amazon.com.

Jennifer Garner, who was the one saving grace of 13 Going on 30 and whom I actually like, though I'm not really sure in what, is ill-served by taking this part. Kathleen Turner once said, "At some point in a woman's career, you've got to choose the ass or the face." Jennifer Garner may be at that crossroads. Sure she has rock-hard abs. She's also getting a rock-hard face. She looks famished, stretched too thin. Garner doesn't get to smile or beguile us or win us over. She isn't allowed to play a believable, world-weary assassin (say, Jean Reno in Leon) either so she's stuck without a role. One scene in particular, where Stick banishes Elektra from further training in his dojo, gives Garner the chance to react as if she's just found out she didn't get her first choice for sorority.

Elektra has the gift of kimagure, the ability to see—briefly—into the future. If you had it, you would see yourself leaving Elektra saying, "Well, that's ten bucks down the tubes."