FilmJudge - The Spirit

REVIEW

The Spirit
2009
Certificate: 12 | Runtime: 103 | Director: Frank Miller
Starring: Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Paulson

Central City USA has a protector in The Spirit (Macht); a mysterious figure who fights the forces of evil. He was murdered rookie cop Denny Colt, but has returned from the dead to protect his city. He is currently on the trail of The Octopus (Jackson), a villain who wants to destroy the city and become ruler of the world. To that end, he is after the blood of Heracles, which will turn him into a god. But when the opportunity arises to obtain the blood from Sand Saref (Eve Mendes), there is a complication and neither of them ends up with the right artifacts - she wanted Jason's Golden Fleece. The Spirit has to prevent The Octopus from getting the blood, but is also embroiled in a love triangle with Sand Saref and doctor Ellen Dolan (Paulson).

If nothing else, The Spirit does at least offer a few useful pearls of wisdom. It should remind studio executives to be far more cautious when entrusting big budget films to first-time directors. It should say to certain graphic novelists attempting to be writers that, considering the last film they wrote was RoboCop 3, they should probably leave the complexities of the script to somebody else. And it should tell capable actors to look at more than the concept in its theoretical stages before signing their contracts.

Sin City is arguably the Citizen Kane of this sort of comic book/graphic novel adaptation. Miller was, of course, the creator of both Sin City in its original comic form and indeed 300, which was successfully brought to screen in 2007. And he even has a degree of directorial experience insofar as he is credited as a co-director with Robert Rodriguez on Sin City. However, if that film was Citizen Kane, The Spirit is like remaking it with Uwe Boll in the director's chair and Paul Walker in the title role. It's a film that confirms little else other than that Miller might have a good eye, but has absolutely no idea how write dialogue or build characters.

The dialogue in The Spirit is almost universally appalling. On occasion a deliberate lightness of tone is apparent, but more often than not it's the moments that are supposed to be serious or dramatic that are the most amusing. It's full of little phrases and gimmicky lines that are meant to sound cool - particularly when characters are issuing threats, or when The Octopus goes on one of his many rants about eggs - but it all sounds like it was written by a 10-year-old boy. And when you combine this with the endless and falsely dramatic narration Macht has to tackle, you're left with a film which seems completely unsure of its tone or intent.

And as for the characters, they are paper-thin. 300 had thin characters, but offset this by making them into larger-than-life figures and archetypes. On the other hand, Sin City is highly regarded for the richness of some of its characters. The Spirit offers neither of these options. The Spirit himself is bland and lacks a real human edge; Macht's performance is unspectacular in every way. Jackson turns his ham up to eleven, and in some respects is actually fun to watch. But The Octopus brings with him no menace or threat, and nor is there anything more to him than his decidedly crazy exterior. Paulson is given a nothing role and has no chemistry with Macht, while Mendes - despite fitting nicely into the visual style of the film - is only in a couple of scenes. And Scarlett Johansson - playing The Octopus's sidekick Silken Floss - is on total autopilot.

In fact, just about the only thing The Spirit has going for it is the way it looks, and even then it falls short of its more imaginative predecessors. In places the film does look good, with its noir-inspired comic appearance, its bright reds, an abundance of smoke and snow, and other general creators of atmosphere. And yet the costumes and sets are plain and lack detail, and the film as a whole lacks the visual range of other films like it. It looks good, but not as good as it could have done. And since this is the only thing Miller really had going for him coming into The Spirit, you can notch this up as yet another problem in what is something of a calamitous film.

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