The Spirit

I loved it, but the odds are, you won't.

The What: The Spirit is a seriously old school crimefighting dude, created the
same year as Batman. He wears a little domino mask, wears a suit and fedora,
and his main superpower was that everyone thinks he's dead, so he can get away
with being a vigilante. I had a go at reading some of the original Spirit
comics, but I gave up on them, because The Spirit has a black sidekick who's
depicted in a mindbogglingly racist way (even for 1939), and I couldn't get
into it.

Fortunately, in his crusade to reinvent The Spirit, Frank Miller (for it is he
who amazingly has been allowed to make a film) has glossed over that. And from
what I can tell, he's pretty much changed a lot of other aspects of The Spirit,
and done it in the style of Sin City instead. For starters, in twelve years of
writing The Spirit, Eisner never showed The Octopus's face. In the film, you
get a good look at him no more than five minutes in, and Samuel L. Jackson
steals the camera every chance he gets. That, if nothing else, shows you that
this isn't so much an adaptation as Frank Miller taking inspiration then going
nuts.

It's a complete mess of a film. It's done in that black/white/red style that
Sin City was shot in. Half the time it's crass and leaden and makes you faintly
embarassed that you're watching it. The other half it's mad, cheesy, glorious
and brillant. I don't think I've seen a film in the last six months with a
moment as bad, or as good as one you'll find in The Spirit. You might, like me,
really love this film. On the other hand, if you walked out after ten minutes,
I'd have to concede that you had a point.