The Spirit Review

I wouldn’t call “The Spirit” a thought provoking film, but it did bring to mind questions of morality: is it right for legendary comic book artist Frank Miller to butcher the work of deceased comic artist Will Eisner? The answer is no. And If Will Eisner was alive today I’m sure he would denounce the film, but for now all he can do is spin in his grave.

The film is gorgeous. That’s the only positive thing I can say about the movie. No surprise It’s directed with the “Sin City” style, but with more color, doing away with the depressing black and white film noir color scheme. “The Spirit” is loaded with colors, vibrant reds and blues, even the main characters shoes have an eerie white glow. How often is white a cool color? And the green screens are less obvious. The backgrounds are real and if there were green screen effects I could never tell.

So Frank Miller is a good artist. We know that. It translates to his film. But does that qualify him as a director of live action film? Robert Rodriguez lost his directors guild membership to give Miller a partial directors credit. Thanks a lot Rob, you've created a monster.

The first scene sets the tone nicely. The spirit dashes through Central City and proclaims the city as his woman, and he must protect her no matter what. There are villains in Central City. Who is his Joker? The Octopus, a character so silly and over the top he would embarrass Joel Schumacher. He’s played by Samuel Jackson. Miller gave him the a scenery buffet and gave him full authority chew it until nothing was left. It seems Samuel Jackson's goal in 2008 was to make an ass of himself numerous times...







...mission accomplished.

Octopus and the Spirit are immortals. They beat each other to near death and regenerate only to pointlessly continue fighting. The fights are grim, bloody and as intense as a Looney Tunes cartoon. My apologies to Chuck Jones. Toilet seats are involved, and The Octopus must proclaim how funny they are.

The Octopus wants the blood of Heracles so he can becomes a God who’s a little more invincible. But it gets mixed up with another case held by Sand Serif (Eva Mendes), a jewel thief after Jason’s golden fleece. She has some back story with The Spirit which is shown in a dull flashback that shows bad amateur acting, wastes valuable screen time and fails to develop the characters properly. Octopus has the fleece, Sarif has the blood, and The Spirit is caught in the middle. This situation could work itself out in a ten minutes. But it takes a boring hour and a half. Most of the time the Spirit yaks it up with the other boring characters about boring things I couldn't possibly care about.

The characters in this movie are as flat and one dimensional as the comic pages they supposedly came from? Miller is incompetent as a story teller as he fails to explain who the Spirit is and what makes him tick. Why does he fall in love with every woman he meets? Why does he feel the need to protect the city no matter what? At one point after Denny Colt is shot to death and reborn he decides to start a new life as a secret crime fighter and tell no one he is alive.

We learn the Octopus is the one who killed him and resurrected him. Why did Octopus kill his mortal enemy then bring him back to life with invincibility? It was just an experiment. Guinea pigs must be hard to find in these comics, as well as common sense.

I would say the performances in this movie were bad, but calling them performances is an over statement. Scarlett Johnson is drop dead gorgeous but her acting is beyond amateurish. Her performance belongs in a middle school play.



Eva Mendes probably gives the best performance using her blandness to play the one character who isn't completely over the top. She's so quiet and understated she has to take all her clothes off just to get the attention of the audience.



And Samuel Jackson somehow missed a razzie nomination, despite shouting the worst dialogue ever spoken while wearing a Nazi outfit. This doesn't qualify because?



I learned to accept bad acting from comic movies, until they evolved with films like “Iron Man” and the “Dark Knight”, which is ironic because the newer Batman films are inspired by Frank Millers vision of Batman. This movie is more along the lines of “Batman and Robin”. Think about it: horrible over the top characters, acting and dialogue, every shot is over produced with special effects and the script is an incoherent mess. Tell me how this is any better then “Batman and Robin”, you know it isn’t.

My grade: D-