Review: The Spirit

Spirited Away

Once again, we are witnesses of the Hollywood machine at work. When a good idea is sprouted forth and is well accepted, the machine goes into overdrive and starts to mass produce many films that fit a similar mold of what was previously so successful. In this case, it is a continuing effort that has been going on for a long time: comic book movies. This year alone has seen the adaptations of Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and, of course, The Dark Knight. What made these films successful were that they had actual filmmakers behind them who knew what you needed to do in order to make a movie. The Spirit is a perfect example of what is generally the difficult task in creating a film based on a comic book: the two mediums are very different and do not mix together very well.

Looking very faithful to the Will Eisner graphic novel, the Spirit (Gabriel Macht) is the indestructible protector of Central City, a dark place that looks like infinite back alleys joined together. His major quest is to go after the notorious villain the Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) who not only wants to take over the world by drinking the blood of Hercules (don't even make me explain that) but also holds the secret to Spirit's immortality. On his quest, Spirit is also on a battle with the police commissioner (Dan Lauria), indulging in a hot-n'-cold romance with the commissioner's doctor daughter (Sarah Paulson) and looking for his long lost teenage sweetheart (Eva Mendes) who has an obsession with all things shinny.

Frank Miller is one of the many geniuses of the comic book world. His great influence on the Batman comics in the 1980s bled profusely over into Tim Burton's vision, 300 proved to be an adrenaline fueled romp that stimulated the mind, and Sin City at one point was dubbed the "Citizen Kane" of the comic book movies. However, many of the film versions of Miller's works have succeeded because he didn't do them. Burton, Zack Snyder and Robert Rodriguez are filmmakers and did their best to make their films just that. Miller is not a filmmaker, and this movie gets stuck in the comic book world that he loves but is terrible on screen. His efforts feel static, wasteful, and a watered down version of what was so gloriously presented in Sin City in order to achieve a PG-13 rating.

Macht certainly looks the part for this film, but a lot of the time his efforts stretch only as far as the movie goes. It's not completely his fault because his character is utterly boring anyway. I could blame Eva Mendes, who is only present to be eye candy and only becomes important in one scene or two. But I have to place blame on two: Jackson, and his character's femme fatal Scarlett Johansson. They're performances are not only bad, but they're over the top even for a comic book movie. You know you've got a stinker when Jackson's acting is even more ridiculous than him prancing around in a Nazi uniform. Johansson is just reading lines off of a blackboard and his an absolute bore. The only actors who try to bring up this sinking ship are Lauria and Paulson, playing just at the right side of not being too serious to seem out of place nor too over the top to become laughably ridiculous.

The obvious connection the film wants to make is that it's like Sin City. It's nothing like that film, which faulted on its direct script but made up for it in stunning visuals. Comic book dialogue is terrible, but Miller thinks it works in the film. Nothing could be further from the truth. In honesty, nobody cares what people say in comic books; the dialogue is always bad. People just want to look at all the nice drawings. That's what the movie is: a bunch of pretty drawings that are unfortunately attached to a shoddy plot that screeches across like nails on a chalkboard. Hopefully this will be a wake up call for that machine to screen some films more carefully before they're let out into the world. 1/2* / ****; GRADE: D-