As I had feared, Frank Miller's new film The Spirit is starting to see the first reviews come in and...well...let's just say they're not too good. Variety has posted up a rather disparaging review of the film that certainly makes me even more worried to see it than I was before.
A slain cop is resurrected as a masked crime-fighter in "The Spirit", but Frank Miller's solo writing-directing debut plunges into a watery grave early on and spends roughly the next 100 minutes gasping for air. Pushing well past the point of self-parody, Miller has done Will Eisner's pioneering comicstrip no favors by drenching it in the same self-consciously neo-noir monochrome put to much more compelling use in "Sin Sity". Graphic-novel geeks will be enticed by the promise of sleek babes and equally eye-popping f/x, but general audiences will probably pass on this visually arresting but wholly disposable Miller-lite exercise.
Ouch. That's not good to hear at all. But that's not it. It gets worse.
The question of how Colt acquired his powers is meant to propel the story forward, but an air of inconsequence sets in almost immediately with the first mano-a-mano clash between the Spirit and the Octopus, neither of whom seems capable of destroying the other. Barely 15 minutes in, the sense of anticlimactic overkill is palpable.
There's a lot going on here, but none of it sticks -- not the shopworn plotting nor the arch, stilted dialogue. The actors often seem to be delivering their lines in ironic quote marks, suggesting a straight-faced sendup of noir and comicbook conventions that, whatever the intended effect, falls mostly flat.
The Spirit himself doesn't supply much of a rooting interest; Macht's role is colorless in more ways than one, and we see more of the actor's nicely sculpted torso than his face (most bigscreen heroes have the decency to take off their masks once in a while).
Ok, so based on this review and some of my own thoughts from watching the trailers I've started to prepare myself for what I will be watching next weekend. It sounds to me like the film is in the tone of the 1960's Adam West Batman TV show, but with the visual style of Sin City. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I don't think it's the most intelligent creative decision that could have been made, but I suppose it could have been worse. I doubt the film will be as bad as Batman and Robin was.
I just am worried that the decision to make it look like Sin City is going to draw people to it expecting to see the gory R rated violence that is associated with that film. That's just not what they're going to get here. Oh well, I guess we'll find out. I'll definitely be reviewing The Spirit once I've seen it.
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