Down these mean streets a man must come. A hero born, murdered, and born again. When a Rookie cop named Denny Colt returns from the beyond as The Spirit, a hero whose mission is to fight against th...
The Spirit fails to protect its monochrome city from an incomprehensibly messy story. Black night. White streets. Red tie. A silhouette guarding the inhabitants of a stone-cold metropolis, gliding across the paved rooftops. Miller’s adaptation of Eisner’s newspaper comic strip is very much a Batman clone, considering Miller originally wrote ‘The Dark Knight Returns’. A gritty portrayal of comic tropes embedded within a world of realism. Neo-noir aesthetics enveloping the midnight darkness. A caped hero, adorning a mask, prowling the illuminated avenues. The Spirit adopts such principles. Yet instead of grasping the creative freedom that film provides, Miller somehow constructs a limited storyboard of comic frames with no end goal. Suffice to say, the result is a diabolical mess, with no otherworldly spirit arriving to save the day.
A thinly-masked man known simply as “The Spirit”, must stop his nemesis “The Octopus” from obtaining the blood of Heracles, enabling him to become immortal. Meanwhile, his childhood friend, Sand Saref (sounds like the font, but not quite...), is in search for the Golden Fleece. Y’know, Jason and the Argonauts? Anyway, yeah. That’s essentially the film. The inherent problem here is that the abrupt editing and unnatural splicing of scenes produced a narrative that became incomprehensible. For example, The Spirit is inhibiting his best ‘Mirror’s Edge’ run and then suddenly Sand Saref emerges from a lake as if being resurrected, only to then introduce The Octopus, as he is standing in a swamp, having a slapstick brawl with the eponymous hero. Let’s stick with this five minute segment for now. Immediately, Miller was unable to dictate the feature’s overall tone. Commencing with a gritty noir vibe, randomly transitioning to a femme fatale mystery and switching to comic book comedy. There is no solid tone.
Throughout the entire film, he plays with various strands, only to further enhance the narrative mess he had already created. You have to sit and ponder “what the hell is going on?” for the vast majority of the runtime. Everything, from the world-building to the characters, was underdeveloped. Yes, nearly every frame looked gorgeous and replicated Eisner’s comic style wonderfully, particularly the lighting and exposure of red colours. But it’s an obnoxious style that severely outweighs its confused substance.
Plaster of Paris? Lorelei Rox? Who? What? Where? Why? They appeared momentarily and essentially disintegrated like poor Muffin did. Macht as the titular protagonist was beyond mediocre, exhibiting his best Batman impression it seemed. Broody, yet dull. Mendes was lacklustre, providing appealing looks over commendable acting. At least Paulson gave full efforts, so there’s that. The surprise though, and I can’t believe I’m admitting this, was Jackson and Johansson’s completely exaggerated double act. The surreal Nazi presentation that they produced was undeniably cheesy yet shockingly hilarious. Where’s their spin-off? Because they just about saved this film. The rest? No thank you.
Miller pretty much replicated the stylistic structure he innovated in ‘Sin City’ and switched to a different intellectual property. It doesn’t work. Stick to the source material, or just watch ‘Sin City’.
