The Spirit Review-By Kelsey Zukowski

Starring: Gabriel Macht, Jaime King, Eva Mendes, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlet Johansson, Dan Gerrity
Directed By: Frank Miller
Written By: Frank Miller (screenplay), Will Eisner (comic book series)
Released: December 25, 2008
Grade: C

The Spirit drastically fell short of the film that I hoped it would be. With such a great cast and Frank Miller, creator of Sin City, adapting and directing the film it should have been better. Especially with the artistic comic noir style that is almost identical to that in Sin City. The imagery and atmosphere is about all that the films have in common though. The Spirit being different would actually be a good thing, but there really wasn’t much to it and on top of lacking in so many areas, what was there was weak and often laughable.

Denny Colt (Macht), a former cop, has come back to life in a new form that he doesn’t even really understand. He doesn’t even know if he is human at all. He refers to himself as ‘The Spirit” and devotes himself to protecting Central City at all costs. There are many dangers around that he has to stop, but the biggest of all is his arch nemesis, The Octopus (Jackson). They constantly are fighting each other, neither seeming to be willing to give up. The Octopus begins to reveal why they are able to do this, because they are more alike than The Spirit would like to admit. They both bruise, but they have some sort of healing powers that enables them to get back to normal, making it hard for either to kill the other. The Spirit has always wondered and even feared what he is and is now trying to get closer to The Octopus in hopes of finding the answers. The Octopus has his own reasons for bringing The Spirit to him. He wants the blood of Hercules that he believes will make him in to a God, meaning that all of Central City will have to listen to his every command.

It appears that Sand Sarif (Mendes), Denny’s childhood friend and first love, has the blood The Octopus is looking for and he has the treasure that has brought her back to Central City. The Spirit works in accordance with the police force who are out to arrest Sand for murder. Luckily, he knows Sand like no one else does and sets out to find her. Before he can though The Spirit may be hit in a way that is beyond recovery even for him, leaving the rest of Central City to suffer, even those he still cares most about.

Samuel L. Jackson was the best part of the film. He has the perfect energy and evil, power hungered mentality to bring us a fun villain in The Octopus. He uses cheesy and stale lines and situations, and yes he is a cheesy bad guy because of this, but with the conviction that Jackson uses he is a cheesy fun bad guy that is still entertaining to watch. Scarlett Johansson gives one of her weaker performances to date in The Spirit. There isn’t much put in to her character and overall she seems pretty pointless. Gabriel Macht did decently as The Spirit, but there was plenty lacking, partially because of the script and holes in his character. Eva Mendes gave a very hallow performance as Sand Sarif. I actually thought the younger version of her character was far more interesting. There was much more chemistry and the actors who played these characters as kids were much more compelling. When they are older, there isn’t much intrigue left. Unfortunately, this was just a short flashback sequence and in the bulk of the film we are stuck with the mundane performances and flat characters of Sand and The Spirit. I really liked Dan Gerrity as the police detective and as the father of one of The Spirit’s love interest, he added an angle with his relationship between the three of them.

I’m not quite sure what Frank Miller was going for with The Spirit. It is hard to detect the tone that he meant to have in the film. The Spirit works much better as a bad cheesy movie, but I am not sure that Miller meant for this to be a comedy. It seems like it is supposed to be a serious action film, but it fails in holding this up. It is the same typical superhero plot of a crime infested city that only our hero can try to clean up. I do like the aspect of the good guy being a product of the bad guy. However, this is where the meaning of the film dies. Any interest that the plotline of Sand showed is lost when there doesn’t seem to be much to the adult version of her. The player that The Spirit is was mildly amusing at first, but then the love triangle between him, Sand, and Ellen ends up seeming pointless. It is never clear what The Spirit really wants and when we think we know what he wants, he goes back on this and acts in the opposite way. This really holds us back from being able to root for any particular relationship to emerge and makes us just care less and less about this subplot and even about The Spirit himself.

There are some moments in the film that really don’t seem to fit at all. The most obvious is when The Spirit is captured by The Octopus. He is tied to a dentists’ chair and Jackson and Johansson walk out in Nazi uniforms and begin to babble complete nonsense. Their characters do want power, but that is the only similarity you could tie to them and Nazis. This is quite a stretch and the only point in the film where anything like this is even hinted at, making it seem even more out of place. What really hurt the film the most was the dialogue yet it actually helped it through unintentional comedy. The dialogue and even majority of the script in general is horribly written. However, this is one of the films’ only redeeming qualities. If it has more intelligent dialogue and more developed characters and plot lines it could have been a great film. It didn’t take this route though so the only entertainment is in how bad it is almost making it good. The film’s cheesiness definitely makes for plenty of laughs. The cinematography was dark with vibrant contrasting colors. However, it is nothing that you haven’t seen before, it is just a shame this art work wasn’t given a better context, especially with how well the dark comic book style is done. It is no question that Miller opted for style over substance in The Spirit. If you go in to it knowing that it is a poorly written and executed film, but a cheesy entertaining one at that than you should still be able to enjoy certain aspects of it.