The Spirit
Based solely on what I’ve seen (and read) on this adaptation of the comic series from icon in the field Will Eisner, here’s what I could expect from the film- “Sin City”-esque visuals, vivacious vixens, cheesy acting, and noir-ish voiceover. On each of these counts, “The Spirit” delivers in spades.
One thing I did not see (or hear) coming was a score by David Newman (“Serenity”) that could rate with the year’s best. True, it plays like a first cousin to the music Robert Rodriguez, Graeme Revell, and John Debney wrote for “Sin City”- and it can’t completely distract from the comic book performances and sometimes-dull visuals, but deft illusions to Morricone and Elfman combine with old school detective scoring to create a richer sonic universe when the visuals fall short.
They don’t all the time. While it’s inescapable to see writer-director Frank Miller (the comic icon behind “300,” “Sin City,” and “Batman: Year One”) aping the artificial visual look he and Robert Rodriguez created for the cinematic “Sin City,” Miller and cinematographer Bill Pope (“Spider-Man 2” and the “Matrix” trilogy) have a keen eye for evocative imagery, even if the action borders on self-parody.
The visuals aren’t alone in that. It’s hard to take this noir/superhero hybrid seriously when the main character (played uncharismatically by Gabriel Macht) is wearing a cheap Zorro mask around his eyes, everybody’s acting (even Samuel L. Jackson as The Octopus) seems ripped from the Ed Wood school of performance art (although the idiot clones were pretty funny), and every action scene feels like it should be punctuated with “Pow!!” and other throwbacks to the ’60s “Batman” TV series. Well, at least Miller gave us great-looking women (from bombshells Eva Mendes and Scarlett Johansson to the more subtly-gorgeous Sarah Paulson) to look at. Maybe a little bit of cheese is what the doctor ordered for such a self-conscious hero’s tale, but think of what could have been so much more…cooler.
