'Spirit' heavy on atmosphere, light on sense
To those of us who read comics in the 1980s, Frank Miller is a god.
Miller electrified the comics industry back then with his hard-boiled writing and stark, cinematic art. He started by redefining stale superhero characters - Miller's dark take on Batman was a clear influence on this year's "The Dark Knight" - then created unique original series like "Sin City," his love letter to tough-guy crime fiction.
It pains me, then, to have to break some bad news about "The Spirit," the new superhero movie that's Miller's solo directing debut.
It's a mess.
"The Spirit" is based on a World War II-era comic series by the late Will Eisner, one of the medium's pioneers and one of Miller's idols.
The hero of the series isn't a superpowered alien, but a beat cop killed in the line of duty who returns from the dead as a masked avenger called the Spirit. Eisner surrounded his hero with vicious, cackling villains and plenty of sexy women, all of them inhabiting a dark, shadowy urban landscape that anticipated the postwar film noir movement.
Miller retains most of these elements for his film adaptation. (He wrote the script in addition to directing.) Gabriel Macht plays the title hero, and Samuel L. Jackson plays his archenemy, the Octopus. The other key character in the film is Sand Saref (Eva Mendes), a notorious jewel thief and the Spirit's boyhood flame.
The story is classic comic-book mad-scientist stuff: The Octopus wants an elixir that will grant him immortality and enough power to rule the world; the Spirit tries to stop him; Sand Saref gets caught in the middle.
As he and Robert Rodriguez did for the film version of "Sin City," Miller filmed his actors in front of green screens, which he later filled with lovingly crafted digital backgrounds. Much of the film is black-and-white (like "Sin City"), and even the color segments take place in a dark, dreamy world of shadows and smoke. Miller still has an impressive visual imagination, and some of the shots in "The Spirit" are breathtaking.
What Miller hasn't mastered yet is cinematic narrative. The story lurches along in stops and starts. Characters enter and exit for no clear reason. They speak rapid-fire dialogue that sounds like it's been lifted from a 1940s melodrama, but with no real wit behind it. And the excursions into comedy, a hallmark of the Eisner comic, elicit groans, not laughs.
The most frustrating thing about "The Spirit" is that a good movie, perhaps even a great one, lies buried in this material. The cast is uniformly good, and I think Miller has the talent to be a good filmmaker. I sense that one problem here is that he's simply too close to Eisner and his work. (Eisner and Miller were close friends.) I would love to see what Miller and his visual genius could do with a well-crafted script written by someone who isn't so in love with the source material, someone who isn't afraid to shape it a bit, to adapt it for today.
As a cartoonist, Miller still ranks with the best. As a filmmaker, I'd count him down, but, I hope, not out.
"The Spirit"
One-and-a-half stars
Starring: Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson, Dan Lauria, Sarah Paulson
Directed by: Frank Miller
Other: A Lionsgate release. Rated PG-13 for violence, intense sequences of stylized violence, some sexual content and brief nudity. 103 minutes