Spirit-less (The Spirit (DVD))

Member Name: Wolfzilla

Product:	The Spirit (DVD)
Date:	13/01/09 (143 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's female cast are incredible (on the eye)

Disadvantages: Pretty much everything else

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 The Spirit a money-maker it was Miller, whose history as a writer would guarantee the comic fan-boy's presence and his impressive work with Sin City both the trendy and film-geek crowd's interest. The film would be shot in a style not 100 miles away from Sin City's - lots of black and white with dashes of colour and various other stylistic shots. This set alarm bells ringing in my head right away, the visual style used for Sin City worked so well because it's how the comic was drawn - the spirit used conventional B&W in the old days and colour once it became the norm, to me it really looked like Miller was simply trying to cash in on the success of Sin City and had picked up the license for a fairly obscure comic as means of doing so without causing too much of an outcry from the character's fan base.

The film follows The Spirit (Gabriel Macht)- aka rookie cop Denny Colt, killed in the line of duty but somehow resurrected with the ability to heal himself from wounds. With the blessing of his former Captain Dolan (Dan Lauria) he takes on his secret identity and acts to help the police, bending the rules that they cannot.

The Spirit's world takes a turn for the dramatic when his first love Sand Sarif (Eva Mendes) returns to town - but not as the girl he knew, but as a criminal femme fatale on the hunt for an ancient treasure. However, it turns out that The Octopus also seeks a completely different ancient treasure, yet the two end up with the wrong treasure each and things become complicated. While the treasure Sarif seeks is of value to her only for it's golden nature, The Octopus seeks an elixir that would make him immortal, meaning The Spirit faces a race against time to stop his arch nemesis and save the City.

The saddest thing about The Spirit is that I'm not even really omitting a lot of the plot here. You may be wondering where all the other faces on the poster come into it - Scarlett Johansson as Silken Floss, sidekick to The Octopus? Sarah Paulson as Dr. Ellen Dolan? Jaime King as Lorelei, angel of death? Yes their all in there, but none of them actually do anything significant to the film's plot...come to thing of it there isn't really anything significant about the plot.

Now this might sound like some sort of bitter ranting here, and quite hypocritical from someone whose forte is action films, but the Spirit's plot really is dire, made all the worse by the film's overbearing sense of thinking it's smart. I could have let this plot slide had it been padded with all sorts of wild action sequences, but truth is it's padded with cringe-worthy humour and scenes of The Spirit flirting with the female cast. A little romance and sexual tension isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the fact is the characters are so flat it's impossible to do anything but roll your eyes at their attempts at interaction. Had every one of these scenes ended with a hardcore sex-scene perhaps The Spirit could have found more success marketing itself as a story-driven porno film.

When thinking about The Spirit I can't help but compare it to a film with a somewhat similar background in the form of 1996's The Phantom. Based on a newspaper comic as opposed to the flashier Marvel or DC heroes, The Phantom embraced it's roots and made itself as a simple, perhaps somewhat silly swashbuckling action movie. It got critically slaughtered. The funny thing about The Phantom is that if you watch it now, it really isn't that bad. Like I say it's a bit silly, and god knows that purple suit looks awful, but it's a fairly fun, decently acted caper that pretty much embodies the phrase "comic book adventure". So how does this relate to The Spirit? Well, The Phantom was based on a similar pulpy adventure hero, and it embraced this, and tried unsuccessfully to fly into the wind and be a success in a market that didn't want Superheroes, it wanted grittyness, and realism. The Spirit on the other hand lifts a few elements from it's source material but tries to rearrange them to fit what's 'cool' today. Thus we have the pointless attempts at style, which I'll get back to later, and some of the worst written characters ever seen on screen. For reasons unknown The Spirit has somehow developed superhuman healing in his transition from funnybook to film, and while I think he's supposed to be written as a ladies man, it's so terribly done he comes across as more of a creep. The Octopus apparently originated as a Master of disguise, only identifiable by his trademark gloves...here he's portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson, so given the tickets he sells there's no danger his face will ever be hidden, and instead our villain is a bit of a weirdo who likes to play dress-up as Samurais, Russians, cowboys and in a scene you have to think was inserted sheerly to court controversy a Nazi. It makes you wonder why they even bothered paying for the license to an existing property instead of making one up themselves ala Sam Raimi with Darkman - oh wait, I know, because then they would have to actually write the characters and give them some background and not have the safety net of "you should have read the comics you heathen" snobbery when people question why nothing about the characters is explained! We do get a (highly predictable) new origin for The Spirit, after much tedious "we are brothers" interplay between he and The Octopus, but Jackson's character is one of the most terribly written things I've ever seen in a movie. We're told The Octopus is The Spirit's arch enemy, we're told that The Octopus is evil...but we're never told or shown exactly what he does that is evil. He clones his henchmen and wants to be immortal...but he doesn't really strike me as a criminal mastermind or threat to the world. He's given no story, he reveals he was a coroner, so clearly his alter-ego, facial tattoos and obsession with the number 8 happened sometime between the birth of The Spirit and the movie, but why? If Miller had actually took his finger out and written a movie, and as much as I loathe origin tales, it would have made more sense to show either his or The Spirit's origin, as is we come into it and both are already active and its almost as though you're watching a sequel, like you should know who and what these people are and are all about.

The film also seems to be on a quest to randomly insert as many unnecessary characters as possible. Remember Spiderman 3? How it got a bit cramped as new villains were showing up left right and centre? This is worse. Was there a purpose is Paz Vega's character or were they hoping the sight of her in a belly dancer outfit would distract viewers enough not to notice? Was there a need for Lorelei at all? Was this film just Frank Miller's excuse to have a grand-scale perv-session and get paid for it?

Then there comes the art style...oh boy. Now as I said, this worked in Sin City. It was a fresh way to make the film, and it accurately represented how the comics looked. With The Spirit, Miller effectively turned a masterstroke that really made Sin City into a cheap gimmick. It wouldn't be so bad if there was any consistency to it, but some scenes are colour and just dark, some are B&W with dashes of red, some are sepia, some monochrome...its just jarring jumping from scene to scene where everything is different. The film does have some glorious shots yes, some of the monochrome stuff works, and the first time you see silhouette fighting it is cool yeah, but overall the way the film just jumps from look to look almost comes across as self indulgent on the part of the director.

I can't quite make my mind up if the acting is tragic, mainly because the characters are so terribly written, but let's just say there aren't many good things to say. Macht doesn't exactly excel as a leading man, nor is he convincing as a lothario. Jackson comes across as more camp than menacing and overall there are only 3 members of the cast able to come out of this mess with their heads held high - Johansson is the only player who actually manages to deliver her comedy relief lines with any success, Lauria was made to play these grizzled cop roles and Paulson is clearly trying her hardest with a cardboard character.

On the plus side, the film's score isn't bad, but then that will happen if you basically rip-off Danny Elfman's Batman score - the only thing this film has in common with a good movie.

I know you're thinking "this guy can't be serious, there's no way a film with a cast and budget like this can be that bad" but I'm not lying. I'm not a fan of The Spirit comic, so this isn't a bitter fanboy rant, it's someone who enjoys movies, and has a soft spot for this type of Superhero adventure, disgusted at how a shockingly high budget, cast and crew can be squandered on such a terrible, terrible movie. It's genuinely one of the worst films I've ever seen, and off the top of my head the worst comic book adaptation ever (yes, worse than even Daredevil) it really should be skipped. Yes it's packed to the gills with beautiful women, but my cinema ticket to see this tripe cost me £6.60. Six. Pound. Sixty. For that you could go to your local Asda and pick up a copy of FHM for some beautiful celebrity women in states of undress and use your change to buy a half decent DVD in their sale.

Summary: A film so tragically bad, the only good thing I can say about it is the women are attractive.