Nick's Picks

Well before I go into details, I should start by saying this movie wasn’t very good. In fact, I’d probably give it something around a 5 out of 10, a 50%, an F. It was campy, over-stylized, muddy-paced and held some weak, cliched story elements. But despite it all, I have to say I still enjoyed it.

Word of advise, though. Don’t go see The Spirit unless you want to like it. I know that may sound odd, but you won’t milk an ounce of fun from this flick without going into the theater wanting to be entertained.

At it’s weakest, The Spirit suffers from one major flaw: Frank Miller. It was entirely unnecessary to emulate the Sin City visual style, though I have to wonder if that pitch was how Miller was able to make this movie at all. I could picture Miller selling The Spirit to a studio, where at one executive asks in an innocent, but ignorant, tone, “Will it be like Sin City?” In that fateful moment Miller had to make a choice, whether to get this picture made with a few compromises or leave it in storage until some unseen future. Well, he chose to make it, and in doing so over-saturated the property with the visuals. While admittedly not any sort of aficionado on Will Eisner’s Spirit, I do know its noir look could have been accomplished more subtly. And that really gets down to the heart of everything else wrong with this picture, this being Frank Miller’s Spirit, not Will Eisner’s.

I could bore you with further flaws, but read actual reviews for that. I thought Eva Mendez was weak and her character somewhat unneeded (and terribly cliche besides). Shut up and bleed is a line that now makes me cringe. The plot got muddy and slow in more than one point and the dialogue wasn’t very phenomenal, either, at least the scripted lines. The narrative felt forced and a little too overly poetic.

But now for the good, which radiates from its pulpy camp. Yes, I listed that camp as a negative up top, but when you get past the fact Miller didn’t treat the property like it deserved, you’re able to enjoy the movie for what it is. Samuel L and the main lead Gabriel Macht did fabulous jobs taking these characters to the next level and you could tell when they veered from the lines Miller wrote and actually started having some fun. Truthfully, I’m not sure Samuel L even looked at the script, and thank god for that, because the stuff he came up with was funny as hell and a real boost in his scenes. I also have to hand it to the supporting cast, though a little over dramatic, for the most part were a positive (except those henchmen clones. i hate that guy, whoever he is, and i was forced to see digital copies of him beyond his own unbearable self). The plot also touched on some Greek myth and the missing link between science and magic, and that sort of stuff is right up my alley.

So if you’re willing to see The Spirit, don’t think of the comics, don’t try and piece together any sort of realism or time and place (a 1940’s world with laptops and cellphones), and go for the fun of it. Not every movie has to be good to be fun… right?