By Max Gelber
It took almost three drafts, and an endless list of excuses, but ultimately, it has to be said: Frank Miller’s directorial debut, “The Spirit,” is a mess.
That’s not to say the film doesn’t get many things right. But what it gets painfully wrong along the way bogs the film down, making it nothing but a disappointment. Any other critical review would likely bash the film outright, leaving no positive debris in its path. But the film isn’t bad, per se – it’s just too much for it’s own good at times. At other times, it’s too little.
Based on the 1940s comic strip by writer and artist Will Eisner, Gabriel Macht (“Because I Said So,” “The Others”) plays the titular Spirit, a barely-masked hero who becomes Central City’s quasi-guardian angel after cheating death and returning as an avenger of justice.
Samuel L. Jackson takes a great amount of liberty with his role as The Octopus, a former coroner and arch-nemesis to The Spirit. Eva Mendes and Scarlett Johansson round out the core cast as Sand Saref, a childhood love interest of the Spirit’s-turned-jewel thirsty con artist, and Silken Floss, a femme fatale sidekick to the Octopus, respectively.
The plot – though it barely exists – revolves around a vase and a fleece. The vase contains the blood of Hercules, and will bring immortality to any man who drinks it, while the golden fleece belongs to the lost Argonauts. Miller finds time to squeeze these themes back into the fold every now and again, but his struggles with forming the script alone are far too evident.
Then, there is the film’s greatest source of confusion: its dialogue. Everyone in this film, minus Jackson, seems either confused or uncomfortable with the dialogue they’ve been given. If this effect was intentional, then the film is genius.
The visuals of this film are the real stand-out star, on par with those in Sin City, which Miller authored. The film drips with rich contrasts of black and white, splashes of deep reds and richly tinted hues of blue.
Yet, in what practically becomes a motif, they get too carried away, making for a few head-scratching sequences straight out of French new wave history, including heads grafted onto tiny jumping feet, crawling dismembered fingers and the hero tumbling out of the mouth of a prepubescent Saref.
Leaving the theater, it’s hard to put a finger on what the cast was trying to portray. It seems too earnest to be considered camp, yet too bizarre to be taken seriously. With everything that was done wrong, it’s hard to deny the simple fact that this film is fun to watch. And weren’t comics meant to be fun?
