The Spirit (DVD)

There's one thing to be said for definite about Frank Miller's films: they're visually stunning. He manages to capture a rich black and white effect with the odd splash of brilliant colour. I'll admit, to start with, it looks a little strange, but you soon get used to it, and it is undeniably impressive. As a writer/artist of comic books, he has long been in the top flight. His launch into stardom as a director couldn't have started better, either, with Sin City and 300 both excellent. However, his third film as director, The Spirit, didn't quite come off as well as he had intended. Who knows? It may exactly as he intended it, and he doesn't care what the ...  Read the complete review

This might seem a very premature and very bold prediction, but I'm going to stick my neck out anyway. I watched this film on 2 January 2009, and it's possible that I may already have seen the worst film of the year. Put it this way, if there is going to be a worse one, I don't want to watch it. And hopes were so high... Frank Miller's solo directorial debut, from a script written by him, aping the comic book style of Sin City, which he co-directed. What could possibly go wrong? The answer, it seems, is almost everything. About all The Spirit has in common with Sin City is that it is visually striking, although even here, it fails to live ...  Read the complete review

Based on a comic superhero, rather like Batman and Spiderman, The Spirit is another crime fighter brought to the big screen, the big difference is the style, this film is beautifully shot film noir and it looks incredible. The shadows are deep and long, the emphasis on shapes and features and the photographic work is posed and captivating. The Spirit (Gabriel Macht) is an chiselled and dynamic ex cop, shot in the line of duty and mysteriously resurrected by The Octopus who is intent on finding eternal life. In his new guise as the unkillable hero, The Spirit must maintain the ever present dual role as he romances his widow who is strangely none the ...  Read the complete review

Given that the bandwagon for superhero movies finally seems to be slowing down a little, it was inevitable that a more obscure comic character would manage to creep his way onto the big screen next to the Incredible Hulk and Batman. The Spirit was a newspaper comic strip famous for it's genre-hopping ways, focusing on the adventures of a masked detective that ended decades ago, and despite a recent DC Comics reinvention, the character still isn't really a big enough name that you would think a movie based upon it would be bankable. Enter Frank Miller, legendary comic writer and director of the adaptation of his own graphic novel Sin City. If anyone could make ...  Read the complete review

The Spirit is based on Will Eisner's noir-esque comic strip. Writer/Director Frank Miller has given it the same slick, almost monochrome style of Sin City, with splashes of red here and there - mostly the Spirit's tie. Denny Colt (Gabriel Macht) is a dead cop brought back to life, who sees himself as the spirit of Central City, fighting crime from the shadows. He can pretty much survive anything, to the constant astonishment of the loyal doc Ellen Dolan (Sara Paulson), who is always around to put him back together. Like all the women in the film, she finds him irresistible, but she's also bitterly aware that the faithless Spirit seems to be in love with ...  Read the complete review