Since the long-awaited kiss between two women in this film turns out to be an intended kiss of death, director Rob Bowman's Daredevil spinoff Elektra is not exactly required lesbian viewing.

But that kiss—delivered by Typhoid (Natassia Malthe), the wraith-like beauty of an elite group of demonic henchmen, to the film's heroine Elektra—takes up a fair amount of screen time. We hold our breath as Jennifer Garner’s puffy-lipped character gets swept into a long, life-draining spit swap; but, frankly, it looks too pleasurable to be suffocating.

Unfortunately, lesbians have become acclimated to being portrayed as vampiricly-hungry predators in quite a few on-screen genres. It’s not a good thing, and certainly not a new thing, but a convenient plot device that maintains hetero-normativity while still offering viewers the eye candy of two women getting it on.

Speaking of eye candy, for a presumably-busy, moody assassin, Elektra sure spends a lot of time taking her shirt on and off. In fact if any film has not-so-slyly perfected the ab shot, this is it. How often do you see a noiseless, speed-of-light martial artist working in such exhibitory slow mo? All the CGI-enhanced baddies have to do is sneak up behind her; Elektra’s constantly fixated on rolling her shirt inch-by-inch up her tummy. One expects Garner to suddenly break through the film’s gloomy palate (inspired by comic book creator Frank Miller’s inkings) and into a toothy, bright camera-directed infomercial for the latest abdominal equipment on the market.

There’s also the red satin halter-topped getup that Elektra dons when she’s about to go into serious killer vixen overdrive. Fortunately, the actress’s intrinsically thoughtful face brings a believable brood to her otherwise run-of-the-mill super-heroine, and she somewhat dignifies the bevy of belly-baring sequences.

Weird inconsistencies further round out this film’s B-moviedom: the demon-warriors are unstoppable, impossible to kill one moment, shrapnel brushed off their bodies like dandruff, and then quick work for the ninja-like Elektra the next, their heads snapping and their bodies disintegrating into so much Buffy-inspired dust.

The most convincing (although possibly boring for non-stop action fans) scenes character-development-wise are those in which Elektra is keeping warm in a sleek island mansion with a zillion fireplaces, waiting for the file on the next two people on her “to be offed” list. She does one-arm pull ups and arranges newly store-bought toiletries with obsessive-compulsive vigor. Flashbacks infiltrate her dreams and soften her stoniness.

This is one neurotic world-class assassin.

But that’s what allows us to find Elektra remotely loveable and believable when she flinches at her mission to kill a precocious young teen Abby (Kirsten Prout) and her swarthy widower father (Goran Visnjic).

With Elektra’s tight-lipped quips and the slightly-eastern twinge to her spiritually-guided fighting style, Bowman tries to head Elektra towards the existentialist and zen feel of The Matrix, but sadly for this same reason the film ends up just feeling recycled and obviously missing any real philosophical kernel. Instead Elektra regurgitates easy ideas—for instance, Stick, Elektra’s sensei, is a blind man that can play an unbelievable pool game, and it is only when our loveable assassin realizes she is “pure of heart” is she able to come into all of her powers (but Garner does make for a more convincing deep-albeit-mono-syllabic thinker than Keanu Reeves).

If good effects are all you’re after though, you’ll be pleased. Elektra’s overplayed details--including the incorporation of a seductive lesbian villain, played for homo-eroticism yet hetero-consumption--are the stuff of Hollywood and the foundation of the sci-fi/action genre.

With Elektra it starts to sink in: they write it this badly on purpose, so the ticket holder gets what they paid for—the same old story.