The Big-Screen Spirit!

When The Spirit was released to the cinemas a nearly two decades ago now, I was hopeful that some of Will Eisner's greatest creation would be translated to the big screen at long last.  I'm not naive enough to imagine that the translation would be seamless or that I'd be completely happy, but I held out hope that given a solid comic book man like Frank Miller was in charge, that the essence of the character would remain.

I hoped in vain.

The Spirit we meet on the screen (Gabriel Macht) is a mopey self-absorbed hipster who bounces around town in his overly stylish tennis shoes like a noir Spider-Man. He's got some fetish for "his city" and waxes on endlessly about how he and the city are connected. (A bit too much of the Batman-brew for me.) That would be okay, save that this connection is largely ignored after an overly long set up.

As bad though as The Spirit is, the Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) is a disaster. The mysterious largely unseen villain of the comics is transformed into a loquacious maniac who kills for sheer delight. Both he and the Spirit it seems have been transformed into supermen of a sort and battle each other out of some grand ennui which more than anything else seems to inform this culture. The city and its occupants seem bored, and the audience cannot be far behind.

The women though are beautiful -- Eva Mendes as Sand Saref, Sarah Paulson as Dr. Ellen Dolan, Paz Vega as Plaster of Paris, Jamie King as Lorelei Rox, and Scarlet Johansson as Silken Floss. The filmmaking is at least stylish and visually arresting in places, but overall, The Spirit as imagined by Frank Miller rambles too far from the source material and finds itself lost. It's a rather dull story actually with some clever set pieces which after it's all said and done don't add up to a good movie. The Spirit deserved better. 

It's a shame really. Will never saw it. That's probably a blessing.

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