Directed by: Frank Miller
Premise: An adaptation of the Will Eisner comic
book. The Spirit (Gabriel Macht), an invincible crime fighter, takes on
criminals in his beloved city and reunites with his childhood crush (Eva Mendes).
What Works: There are only a couple of positive
things to say about The Spirit. First, Samuel L. Jackson is by far the
best thing in the movie as super villain The Octopus. Jackson is over the top
and occasionally hilarious, so much so that many parts of The Spirit play
like a dark comedy. Second, Scarlett Johansson channels Dyanne Thorne in Ilsa:
She Wolf of the S.S. and delivers
a very alluring femme fatale.
What Doesn’t: The Spirit is a true
disaster of a film. The picture borrows some of the style of Sin
City, which was co-directed by Frank Miller, but The
Spirit does not demonstrate the same finesse or skill with the filmmaking
tools. Part of the craft of adaptation is translating and molding the original
source material for a cinematic presentation but screenwriter and director Frank
Miller does not seem to understand this, giving the characters dialogue that
would have worked in a weekly comic strip but sounds ridiculous on screen. The
visuals of The Spirit bear out this problem. The Spirit constantly
uses highly stylized sequences but they do not advance the story, and they often
cloud what is going on. The picture is a gaudy display of meaningless style and
hyperactive editing that makes Speed
Racer look like The
Blair Witch Project by comparison. Aside from Samuel L. Jackson’s
antics and Scarlett Johansson’s one-liners, the rest of the cast is
uninspired. Gabriel Macht is very uninteresting to watch as The Spirit. The
character has no personality and no passion. Macht is not the right actor for
this role; it ought to have been played by someone with a 1940s look that would
suit the setting of the film. In general, Eva Mendes acting is about as good as
her script choices and she can do little with her role except stand around and
look pretty, which is about all she is required to do in the film. The
picture’s regard for women is rather bothersome and downright sexist. Like Sin
City, all the female characters are presented as highly sexual beings but
unlike Sin City, The Spirit does not allow them the intelligence,
independence, and characterization that marked the females of the former film.
Bottom Line: The Spirit is a disaster of film. In time it might find an audience that will appreciate its flaws but for now the film is a low note in what has been an otherwise stellar year for comic book adaptations.