The Spirit - What the hell is this thing?
If you saw the trailers for The Spirit and immediately drew the conclusion that the film was going to be the “spiritual” successor to Frank Miller’s 2005 gritty, artistic Sin City, be warned. I just saw Sin City for the first time this year, and I can say other than a few of the color tones The Spirit in no way shape or form resembles Miller’s earlier work. But comparisons to Sin City aren’t what ruined The Spirit for me.
I’d like to preface this review for comic book fans by saying that I’ve never cracked a page of anything related to The Spirit, so I’m a complete virgin when it comes to Will Eisner’s source material. I do love Frank Miller’s work on The Dark Knight Returns and Batman Year One comics, so I had some expectations for this going in. In any case, I have no idea if this film bears any resemblance to the work it’s based on. I have absolutely no desire to find out now.
If you’ve read any of my other reviews, you probably have noticed that I’m a pretty soft reviewer. I love movies, so I reach deep into the chest cavity of every film I see and try to pull out the best of the beating heart of any movie and milk as much good entertainment from it as I can. Keeping that in mind, let me give you my carefully considered assessment of The Spirit.
It’s dogshit.
In the interests in maintaining at least an iota of credibility as a film reviewer, let me try to back up this opinion. I’d like to tell you that this will be a spoiler-free review, but to be honest, I’m pretty sure I could describe the film scene by scene and you may still not know what the hell it was about. One minute you’ve got women being shot at in ponds and the next you’ve got melting cats and people being turned into feet. It’s crazy stuff, but not really in the “fun” crazy sort of way.
The film tries to maintain that “timeless” setting. You aren’t supposed to identify it with a time period or city. Miller works hard to mix elements that are relatively generic and/or anachronistic relative to each other to keep the audience from identifying the film in this way. Then about 2/3 of the way through the film, you get two references to “Star Trek” in a 2 minute period. While it was kind of a grinner, it was entirely out of place.
Next, we have some pretty graphic, though cartoonish violence in the film. We see people being impaled with swords, shot, having limbs blown off, bullets in the forehead. Etc. However, when it comes time to see a poisoned cat melting away into a pile of nothingness, they cut away quickly like that’s going too far.
Then there’s this film noir look and feel that you’re beaten over the head with in the art direction and cinematography. I’m actually down with that, but the film starts out kind of half-tongue-cheek with even the drama being over-the-top. It subsequently gets lighter and lighter as the movie wears on. By the end, we’ve lapsed in to cheesy quips, overtly slapstick humor and a Bugs Bunnyesque vaudeville style set piece with the hero and villain in Act 3. It’s completely counter-intuitive to a “film noir” atmosphere.
This movie has no direction, no goals, and no idea what the hell it wants to be other than a bunch of scenes with no thematic connection. The sum of it’s parts is, to put it bluntly: dogshit.
The plot is as murky as month old bathwater, the performances are pretty much slept-walked through, and even some of the blocking is ridiculously bad. To clarify, that would be something like the director telling the actor/actress “okay, we’re rolling, you walk into the shot right to left, stop in front of the other actor, turn to face them, then begin speaking” and then actually using the take in the final cut from before the actor actually even enters the frame. I don’t know how to explain why that’s bad, but if you any feeling about direction, you know what I mean.
This easily ranks in the bottom 2 or 3 of all the films I’ve seen that released this year, and that’s saying something. I saw a lot of movies in 2008. This was just painful to sit through.
If there is any redeeming value in this one hour and forty-four minute piece of intellectual torture, it’s that Samuel L. Jackson presents his usual bad ass performance as the main villain, the Octopus. Unfortunately, he’s also a lot of what’s wrong with the movie being the root of much of the attempt at humor that doesn’t really seem to tread water. Nice to see you Sam, now put this turd behind you.
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2 Responses to “The Spirit - What the hell is this thing?”
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December 29th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
hii.i quest thats is a good & crittism comment about this movie.i think the film have a lot of different from the comics.i like the comic.ok.that’s it.thank u
December 29th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Thanks for reading. Believe me, I appreciate the labor and work that goes into making a film. I don’t review movies using terms like “dogshit” lightly. I guess my question before I invest time looking at the Spirit in print is what IS the comic? Slapstick parody? Comedy? Dark and violent? I think the best way to actually describe this film would be an unholy cross between the movie “Sin City” and the original 1966 “Batman” with Adam West.