1/5 Terrible movie!
  by Bernard Lee (Hong Kong)
I really enjoyed 300 and Sin City but this movie was just plain terrible.

The acting was terrible. Plot was terrible. Cinematography was terrible.

It was a shame that you have good actors (Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson) appearing in this terrible movie.

Please save yourselves even the cost of rental. It will be a sad waste of your time and money.


1/5 What a waste.
  by Doug J. Mack
First off I want to say that I usually give movies the benifit of the doubt and I am normally not too harsh on movies. After stating this I must say that this movie is the perfect example of waisted talent and effort. The movie had a great cast of actors who gave the most awful performances of their careers. At no time was the story even interesting. Seeing that the effects are parrallel to Sin City, I thought this movie had to have some quality to it. This movie is the G rated version of Sin City. The special effects are totally waisted by a bad script and performances. I was warned that this was not a good movie, but this movie truly owes its audience an apology.

3/5 Too... too... well, just too.
  by Bo Østergaard Jepsen (Beijing, China)
I have never read the comics upon which this film is based, and knew next to nothing about the premise of the story when I first saw "The Spirit". I don't really know if it would've helped though. It is, in the words of another reviewer, just plain weird.

The film is haunted by a bad story, really bad story, long periods of nothing happening, stereotypical characters, lack of character depth and development, making not much sense, over acting in the extreme, and seeming like a parody/satire although it's trying to be serious. You don't really know whether to cringe your toes in sheer embarassment on behalf of the otherwise so brilliant Frank Miller, or laugh your head off.

There are good things about the film though. It is visually very stunning, if a bit too reminiscent of "Sin City". There are some quite clever scenes, which makes it rather amusing at times, as for example the samurai scene, in which the bad guys (being lead by Samuel Jackson) are all dressed up like samurais, or indeed the nazi scene, in which the bad guys are dressed as nazis. The final showdown takes you back to "Hot Shots part Deux", or some such thing, and you don't know... well, anything, really.

I wouldn't recommend it, unless you are a bunch of lads with a fridge full of beer and nothing else to do. Then you can watch it as a piece satire and laugh and laugh and laugh.

2,5 stars.

3/5 (Drumming fingers....)
  by Photoscribe (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA)
This is SOOOO not like the strip itself in feel. Will Eisner's "The Spirit" was an original handling of the whole "Shadow"/"Batman"/"Dick Tracy" "creature of the night" crimefighter. The opening splash panels were always so elaborate and illustrative. The Spirit always showed a ton of compassion to his retrievable charges, like Bleak or Sand Serif, (Sand actually being an old childhood friend of his!) but the one antagonist he has that he doesn't show ANY compassion for, the Octopus, played by Samuel L. Jackson, doing his crazy coon routine again, is trying to become immortal by acquiring a serum that will grant him that power from Spirit's old childhood chum, Sand Serif, who has become Modesty Blaise, after a fashion.

The Spirit is Denny Colt, a rookie cop that is killed, but then brought back to life somehow to become the bane of the human vermin in his city. He works in concert with the chief of police, Dolan, and dates his daughter, Ellen. Dolan is not like the strip Dolan. Ellen is not like the strip Ellen. There's a new character that I never saw before, Morgenstern, who plays a Jimmy Olsen type role here. She's more or less just competent comedy relief.

The strip this movie is based on is as old as the hills....going back to the forties, and was originally issued as its own individual supplement as part of Sunday papers every week, until austerity programs got it canceled in that venue. Zip to the early seventies, and publisher James Warren, he of "Creepy", "Eerie" and "Famous Monsters of Filmland", falls in love with the strip and publishes "Spirit" magazine , a compendium of new stories drawn by Mike Ploog and written by Eisner. Actually, if you ask me, it took WAAAAAY too long for this property to be made into a live-action feature. I wonder what held it up.

This is not the first media version of The Spirit, either. Not long ago, (1987,) there was a TV movie done by the Fox network or someone adventurous, and THAT one missed the mark as well! At least they didn't have a version of Ebony in this new one. No, just the Octopus to perpetuuate an unfortunate ethnic stereotype.

Anyway....it could have been worse....there ARE some funny bits in here. The Octopus' cloned henchman are funny, as are some scenes with them and Scarlett Johannson. However, the feel of the old srip just isn't there, and whoever put Gabriel Macht in sneakers and a trench coat ought to be shot! And what is it with Frank Miller and near-monochromatic cinematography?? His D.O.P shoots too damned dark and drab for a lot of the movie to be enjoyed completely. A shame, since there was SOME potential here....

3/5 Stylishly filmed, but a little too much Frank Miller
  by Renee C. Mulhare (MA United States)
Just before I first saw this movie, I had the good fortune to pick up and read The Best of the Spirit, a collection of the best of Will Eisner's groundbreaking comic series, and I fell in love with his deceptively simple style, with it's strong understanding of human nature, its colorful and Dickensianly named characters, and above all, it's hero, the likeable yet enigmatic Denny Colt, a detective better known to Central City as "The Spirit"

I always approach a movie I haven't seen as a blank slate, perhaps a little hard to do with Eisner's storytelling in mind. I came away pleased, but a bit disappointed. Frank Miller and his production crew managed to capture some of the quirky humor and the film noir feel of Eisner's comic, but some of the strong sense of morality: of strong heroes working for justice and criminal masterminds who still have a touch of humanity hidden away, some of that felt a bit missing. I love the black and white with touches of color, brought in from Miller's Sin City, but somehow it doesn't quite fit Eisner's creation.

It's uneven, yes, but it's nowhere as bad as some have made it out to be. I had fun watching it, it was entertaining; it could have been better, and it may not have fully captured the spirit of Eisner's work, but it was definitely worth the time to watch it.