Will the real Sin City please stand up? Shhh! Not you, Spirit!
Written: Jan 14 '09 (Updated Jan 14 '09)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Bang For The Buck |
 |
|
|
Pros: Good idea, visually stunning
Cons: the movie's many good actors are handcuffed by their uninteresting characters
The Bottom Line: The Spirit is worth checking out on video because there are positive things about it. How deeply they are buried by the negative ones is all about perception.
|
|
|
| wrestler's Full Review: The Spirit |
Sadly, it has taken only three movies for the graphic novel adaptation genre to need redefinition. We discovered it with the marvelous Sin City, a movie so stunningly enjoyable that it made us (and movie execs, apparently) think that a new genre was born. We were then underwhelmed by the still-pleasant but somewhat flawed 300. When I saw The Spirit, I couldn't help but see it as a Sin City ripoff, an attempt to cash in on what is perceived to be a winning recipe.
Since Frank Miller, the author of the now-famed Sin City novels, instantly became the graphic novel reference after the success of Sin City, it should come as no surprise that he was asked to direct the adaption of this Will Eisner series. The best mind for coming up with stellar graphic novel concepts Miller may be, but he's not a director, at least not yet. I have not read the Eisner novels, but if the film is any indication, it is inferior to Sin City. Miller fails to come up with a way to take The Spirit and make it as compelling as the Sin City film was.
Gabriel Macht stars as The Spirit, a cop who was gunned dead but has mysteriously resurrected as an everything-proof hero. By "everything", I mean bullets along with hits from crowbars, sledgehammers, countless punches to the face and whatever else you can think of. Since his return to life, he has towered over his city (called Central City), protecting its citizens from crime. (By the way, we know the moment we wonder how he can take one bullet after the other as well as doing many other extraordinary things that we will get a flashback mode explanation for his condition.) One trait of the genre well-established by Sin City is over-the-top narration. The Spirit does it too, although he is, by the looks of it, a much more boring person than the Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke and Clive Owen characters from Sin City. Samuel L. Jackson plays his equally unkillable nemesis the Octopus, who would be well-advised to decrease his Red Bull consumption a bit. Jackson, whether out of lack of inspiration from the script or insistance from Miller, puts on an overacting clinic for the ages, one that rivals Dustin Hoffman's showing in Perfume: The story of a murderer.
We meet Spirit's girlfriend from adolescence, Sand Saref (Eva Mendes), whose name sounds like that of a text font on Microsoft Word. She is and has always been obsessed with diamonds and other bright jewelry. Too bad she never got to focus on other things, such as developping an actual personality. The creation of such a bland and uninteresting character has to be considered an achievement in itself, just not the type of exploit you strive for. The vacuity of her personality renders us incapable of caring for her or about anything that happens to her, regardless of Eva Mendes' beauty.
Saref had sworn to leave Central City, but has now returned to acquire the blood of Heracles or Hercules (I say this because she alternates between the two during the film). A murder is committed. Both the chief of police (Dan Gerrity) and Spirit are convinced Saref is responsible, but Spirit denies it, trying to protect her.
The Octopus has a curious ally and right-hand woman named Silken Floss. (I thought that's what you use for your teeth... or is that a joke I don't find funny?) She is played by Scarlett Johansson in an unmemorable performance and is working for the Octopus to pay for her pHd (?!). There has to be an easier way...
Since The Spirit so badly wants to be Sin City 2, let us compare with its role model. In Sin City, the actual town is a character. It is corrupt. Its people are dangerous, over-the-top and endearing in their own twisted way. Central City is depressing. It always snows, people are not interesting and never show affection for one another. It's not hard to imagine why, either. Consider the uncertainty of having an immortal hero, whose heart is thankfully in the right place, fighting an immortal and super dangerous enemy. That has to be stressful.
There is a fight between the Spirit and the Octopus in which the two combine for, say, 50 hits that would kill a normal human being. Then the movie actually begins unveiling its plot. Here is the problem: there is no point to this fight, because none can die. It may be good sport to them, but it's frustrating to the viewer. While Octopus laughs more hysterically than the Joker and Spirit grits his teeth in frustration, we're sitting in our seats thinking "what's the point? It's not like this is going to solve anything now, is it?"
I'm also still trying to figure out the part when Octopus ties up Spirit to a chair in order to cut apart his limbs and mail them out to separate zip codes. The puzzling part of that is Octopus and Silken Floss come dressed as Nazis. Is Octopus a nazi who turned Floss into a neo-Nazi, or were they simply inspired by Prince Harry?
The main problem with The Spirit is that there is not a real person in it. And I do not say this in reference to the two nemeses' ability to take bullets and survive grenade explosions. In Sin City (less so in 300), characters have personalities, histories and other traits that made them interesting. Characters in this movie don't act like human beings, they don't have human emotions. Hence, they are not interesting. Sin City had the supremely talented Robert Rodriguez running the show, whose vision for the adaptation was so utterly spot-on that it left us bewildered. The Spirit has Miller, who despite being the great mind behind the Sin City novels, is not experienced enough as a director to pull such a movie off.
I truly am beginning to wonder whether the adaptation of a graphic novel can again generate the kind of wave Sin City did. I suppose time will tell, but the certain thing is that after The Spirit, a process of reinvention need be undertaken, especially if the same people are to be in charge of making such movies in the future.
Recommended:
No
Movie Mood: Action Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: A few glitches, but mostly complete.
Worst Part of this Film: Script
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
wrestler
|
|
Member: Alexandre Turp
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Reviews written: 161
Trusted by: 18 members
About Me:
Evolution is all that matters.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.