Posted by
Arik on Sunday, January 04, 2009 8:03:04 PM
I had the opportunity not long ago to see the movie "The Spirit." Having really gotten a kick out of "300" a couple years ago, and having a small weakness for old-time superhero movies, I was really looking forward to this one.
Alas.
It's very stylish, funny at points, and features a few VERY hot ladies, all of whom are also very intelligent, which only ratchets up the hotness factor. It also features Samuel L. Jackson having a great time as the super-villan, pretty much stealing every scene he's in. Samuel L. Jackson may have been in a few bad movies (Snakes on a Plane, which was bad, but fun-bad), but I've never seen him give a bad performance. The Spirit, played by Gabriel Macht, is well-acted, and convincing. There are a few pretty good action sequences, with a few bits that appear to violate the laws of physics, although why that should bother me in a superhero movie, I can't quite say.
The real problem is the story. It really doesn't have anywhere to go, and takes a long time to get there. It involves some ridiculous plot to get artifacts from Greek mythology that will convey miraculous powers to those that possess them. Ridiculous plot devices are not a problem for me per se, but it just didn't work for me in this instance. In something like the Indiana Jones movies, where history is the key, and mythology is part of that history, outlandish things happening don't seem out of place or unbelieveable. In this movie, where science is at the heart of the explanation for what is happening, the supernatural just doesn't fit.
Beyond that, the story progresses at a snail's pace, with the outcome telescoped way in advance. I had no real problem seeing where it was going next, because other movies had been there before, and done it better.
Another problem I had, was that the black-and-white style of the movie and the costuming and makeup made it difficult for me to distinguish between Scarlett Johansson and Eva Mendes. They are both extremely good looking, and don't look at all like each other elsewhere, but in this movie, I had some difficulty distinguishing, which was crucial to some plot points, and detracted from the overall experience. Maybe I shoud have looked at them from the neck up. For another, older example of the problem, see "Criminal Law," with Gary Oldman and Kevin Bacon. In that movie, they look enough like each other that my whole family was trying to figure out who was who.
The last thing I'll mention is kind of a quibble, but it threw me out of the spirit (pun intended). The movie is a little unstuck in time. The comic was started back in the forties, and the style is an attempt to recreate that, but it appears that they are using much more modern equipment, including cell phones at different times. This really became a problem for me in the middle of the movie, where, out of nowhere, there is a huge set right out of the Third Reich, and while it IS something of a guilty hoot to watch Jackson storm around in a Nazi uniform, it really felt way out of place in both the tone and subject matter of the film.
So, in the end, this wasn't entertaining enough to recommend, but if you don't have anything to do on a cold winters' night, and this is the last DVD available at the video store, you could do worse.
I give it a blah.