Review of The Spirit (1987) by Keith G — 23 Aug 2010

When it comes to "The Spirit" I considered it an accomplishment to make it through the entire film. Hampered by some horrible dialogue and a boring, lifeless, and tedious story, "The Spirit" is no where near as stylish as it tries to look.

While I've always felt Frank Miller was an over-rated comic book writer, I expected much more from him as the director. "The Spirit" has all the source material to be a good film but any hope of salvaging an entertaining picture was wasted.

The story is ludicrous and sometimes incoherent. The characters are lifeless and often embarrassingly over the top. Samuel L. Jackson gives probably his worst performance and along with Johansson come across as clowns.

Macht looks like Spirit but his wooden, emotionless delivery of his lines is distracting. Miller does create some visual eye-candy and the stylized look starts off catchy and effective. But when it's the only redeeming quality of the film it looses most of it's impact.

This movie is a huge disappointment and one of the worst comic book adaptations. Don't just skip it, skip it twice.