The Spirit

A word of caution before I proceed. In this review I will heap; praise upon this movie and talk about how much I love it, but I do not recommend this movie to anyone. Please remember that! The Spirit will have limited appeal and even in its limited appeal, that person has to be in the exact right mood for it. I repeat, I am not recommending it to anyone, please do not see it because I loved it and then blame me when you hate it!

The Spirit of Central City lives inside a man who cannot be killed. He is an impeccably dressed man, with a red tie, nice hat and converse all star looking shoes. He is an actioneer, but he takes a serious beating. He wears a mask and falls in love with every woman he faces. He is a smooth talker and narrates his story to a cat (the symbolism there, of a cat having nine lives). His Nemesis, The Octopus(Samuel L. Jackson) is some whacked out scientist with an affinity for eggs, or a hatred of eggs, it is hard to decide. He injected himself and The Spirit to make them invincible, but in order to be truly immortal he has to drink from the blood of Heracles, but he got the wrong treasure chest. He got Jason's golden fleece and Sand Sariff(Eva Mendes) who likes shiny things accidentally got the blood of Heracles. The Spirit, when he was alive was in love with Sand Sariff when they were young, but after an accidental shooting, Sand took off vowing to never come back to central city. The Spirit wonders why she is back. He is also wondering what the deal with him and the Octopus is. Oh and The Octopus has a side kick named Silken Floss(Scarlett Johansen) and they are helped by petrie dish creations who all look the same but have names like Logos, pathos, mythos and such.

Frank Miller, who created The 300 and Sin City also created Elektra. In doing so, he openly admitted he stole from Will Eisner's The Spirit. As the writer and director of The Spirit he is homaging Will Eisner. However, he is shooting it and making it look like Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, which, as I mentioned before, was created by Frank Miller. What that means is Frank Miller is homaging Eisner, by copying Robert Rodriguez, who was copying from Frank Miller. It is as if the original artist he painted something based on a tracing of his work. The new version is not as good as the original or the tracing. However, it is perfect for me. With dialog that sounds like it was taken from a hardened 1940s detective story, for example "I've known some pretty strange women in my time but this one, she's got the final word on strange" and my personal favorite "I'm gonna kill you all kinds of dead" I felt like Frank Miller had written this movie specifically for me to enjoy. Those kinds of lines are the reasons I loved Frank Miller as a comic book artist growing up. He found a way to move words around to create the perfect lines one would never say, but would want to say.

Miller directs The Spirit half like a detective story, with 4th wall breaking narration, and half like a goofy action comedy, like a 1950s sci fi action movie. For example the half hilarious half absurd first fight between The Spirit and The Octopus where a toilet comes into play. He is not as sure footed as Rodriguez as a director, but I kind of enjoyed that genre mashing stuff. I feel like Miller had been waiting too long to direct a movie and figured he may as well get it all in there in one movie. He even goes into Bergman like Surrealism when The Octopus puts on a German Nazi outfit and brings in a belly dancer who wields serious swords.

Miller loves sexy women too. Lady Death is a sexy lady, floating with jewels all over her and she tries to seduce The Spirit to join her by kissing him. Then, Scarlett Johansen, with sexy glasses and cleavage bearing, acknowledges she is eye candy and that is pretty much her entire purpose being in the movie. But all of that pales in comparison to Eva Mendes. I was starting to worry the screen was going to catch on fire every time she was on screen. She wears diamonds so well, it is as if they would depreciate in value if she took them off. With outfits that cover just enough to make a guy tilt his head in every direction just to try and catch a peak, Mendes ignites the movie with her pure sex presence and when she drops her towel and gives the world a look as her glorious behind, nothing else in that moment mattered. She is perfect and Frank Miller understands how to perfectly use her in his movie.

Everything in The Spirit is an acquired taste and my guess is most people will not be able to acquire it, but it was perfect for me. It has so much in it that just results in giant belly laughs, whether intended or not, I will never know and it will ultimately confuse you and when they movie is over, you will probably wonder what just happened and why we heard Samuel L. Jackson talk about eggs so much, but I loved every glorious second of it. When the movie was over I was ready to go sit through it again, just so I could soak in all of Frank Miller's non-sequitor dialog and nonsensical CGI backgrounds and the awesome shadows only fight sequences. Oh and Eva Mendes' perfect behind. Thank you Frank Miller for not disappointing me with your absurdist brain!

Final Grade: My brain says A, but my heart knows it is a C