The Old Spirit

By Elizabeth Bailey, Staff writer

The Spirit is Frank Miller\’s new film which was released on Christmas Day. It is based off of the popular newspaper comic strip of the same name. Miller has brought us other such adaptations such as Sin City, so one is to expect his characteristic style of grittiness. In this new film, Miller delivers a respectable feel, but the movie\’s weakness in the dialogue and characters is just too strong to ignore.

The plot is about a masked man identified as “The Spirit” who is actually character Denny Colt (played by Gabriel Macht). He fights crime for Central City but his main objective is to rid the city of his archenemy, “The Octopus” (Samuel L. Jackson). Both are endowed with the ability to heal quickly from wounds. The plot moves with “The Spirit” trying to find who he truly is, but he has a difficult time, because besides getting bludgeoned by toilets from his enemy, he also has to deal with the numerous women who complicate not only his life, but also the entire story line.

The movie is— in one word—strange. Miller paid more attention to the look of the film than anything else, a choice that he should definitely have regretted. The black and white landscape reminiscent of Sin City was enjoyable, but the dialogue was unforgivably corny, and countless lines deserved eye rolls and embarrassment galore.

It also seems as though “The Spirit” enjoys either talking to himself or his cats because he does it so frequently, it\’s irritating. A scene of the Spirit discussing his thoughts and reflections in a deserted corner with only a cat to listen makes one wonder about his friends, or better yet, what in the world was Miller was thinking when he was producing the film.

The characters in this film were either over the top or ridiculous. “The Octopus” is crazily temperamental with weird quirks that aren\’t ever explained—like his random disgust and constant mentioning of eggs. The Octopus\’ henchmen are moronic and do nothing but annoy and waste time the 102 minutes you paid good money for. Their only redeeming quality is that they always have new names and it\’s interesting to see what their names would change to. One scene had “Huevos” standing next to “Rancheros” which was pretty humorous. But one has to admit that such thing can even be considered funny, is frankly, very pitiful.

The Spirit can\’t get off the ground. There are too many flaws to the writing and characters to ever revive the movie that better left in a grave than in a movie theater.