Movie Reviews

Lionsgate

Review in a Hurry: There's too much "biff!" and not enough "pow!" in comic-book legend Frank Miller's solo directing debut, a hallucinatory take on an old newspaper serial about a dead cop (Gabriel Macht) who keeps on fighting crime.

The Bigger Picture: It's black-and-white with red all over, but The Spirit is as thin as the newsprint from which it springs. Writer-director Miller, whose comic work inspired Sin City and 300, stays maybe a bit too true to the anarchic feel of Will Eisner's seminal 1940s superhero.

The Spirit starts in high gear, with resurrected hero Denny Colt facing off with his arch nemesis the Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson, here subsisting entirely on chewed scenery and nitrous oxide) in the sort of knock-down, drag-out fight usually reserved for the climax; Octopus' faithful assistant Silken Floss (Scarlett Johansson) sighs and declares it business as usual. (If only it were; The Spirit never surpasses its loopy introduction, except in terms of loopiness.)

Miller's visual sensibilities and devotion to full-blown camp throw a lot of chaff into the air. The Spirit is like Sin City remade by the team behind The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and hence it can take a while to figure out what's going on. But that turns out to be not much; though it sidesteps the usual origin-story dullness by flying into the action, the willfully postmodern touches and arch narration drag The Spirit right back to the ground.

The 180—a Second Opinion: It's obviously a labor of love, as much as any film featuring Samuel L. Jackson in full Nazi regalia could be.