** - Starting off with a lengthy narration in which an inanimate object is frequently referred to by the pronoun “she” is not a good way for a film to endear itself to me. Following that up with a dull and slow-paced story, stilted dialogue and marginal acting, and a movie plops itself into a hole that it has no real chance of digging its way out of. Well, all that describes Frank Miler’s 2008 film “The Spirit”, which unsuccessfully grasps at ultra-stylized “Sin City”-like neo-noir hipster appeal, and ends up with considerably less than a handful of it. Sam Jackson adds to his recent string of poor film choices by portraying bad guy ‘The Octopus’ - one of the more irritating super villains I can recall seeing – who runs around the city with the Black Widow and a legion Tor Johnsons in an effort to defeat the title character, with whom he apparently has some sort of history. The plot is kind of weak, but easy enough to follow, and while the visuals are pretty good they don’t come anywhere near matching those of “Sin City”. The main problems with this film are the shockingly long stretches of nothingness and the broad, silly, sub-“Dragnet” lingo and dialogue. If you can get past that, though, it might be worth a watch.
The Spirit
** - Starting off with a lengthy narration in which an inanimate object is frequently referred to by the pronoun “she” is not a good way for a film to endear itself to me. Following that up with a dull and slow-paced story, stilted dialogue and marginal acting, and a movie plops itself into a hole that it has no real chance of digging its way out of. Well, all that describes Frank Miler’s 2008 film “The Spirit”, which unsuccessfully grasps at ultra-stylized “Sin City”-like neo-noir hipster appeal, and ends up with considerably less than a handful of it. Sam Jackson adds to his recent string of poor film choices by portraying bad guy ‘The Octopus’ - one of the more irritating super villains I can recall seeing – who runs around the city with the Black Widow and a legion Tor Johnsons in an effort to defeat the title character, with whom he apparently has some sort of history. The plot is kind of weak, but easy enough to follow, and while the visuals are pretty good they don’t come anywhere near matching those of “Sin City”. The main problems with this film are the shockingly long stretches of nothingness and the broad, silly, sub-“Dragnet” lingo and dialogue. If you can get past that, though, it might be worth a watch.
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