The Spirit

    Frank Miller's adaptation of the Will Eisner comic strip of the same title was his follow- up to his last two very successful films (both financial and critical), Sin City and 300, was less impressive and in terms of art design, narrative and pace was a pale imitation of his previous successes; however, it is not as bad as the raft of critical reviews would have you believe. As someone who reviews mostly DVD's from the now and the past, in the Forgotten Classics section, I have the luxury of reading the reviews of others, and quite frankly with "The Spirit," I wasn't expecting much.

    It has been years since I've seen someone's art having as many detractors as this picture. It is as if there were a few bad reviews in the beginning, and all these free thinking reviewers jumped on the bandwagon to smite this one to cinematic oblivion. What I found really creepy is that a number of them began parroting one another, without giving reference. Now that's a no-no.

    So, with all the avalanche of bad reviews, I was expecting very little in the way of entertainment. I sat down and watched a campy, comic book narrative, with over the top and "cheesy" dialogue; however, with well crafted dark, monochromatic story board stylized frame by frame narrative and I realized it's a comic book. It's a comic book in its truest sense, and if that is what Frank Miller wants to project, with "Sin City" and "300" in his stable, he has earned the right to do just that. After I got past the point that it was a comic book on film, with the comic book dialogue, and the people as caricatures, I moderately enjoyed the experience of seeing Samuel L. Jackson and Gabriel Macht launch one cheesy line after another at each other as they beat hell out of one another, and in my perpetual "low-brow" delusive state, I laughed. I was entertained for nearly all of its 103 minutes of runtime.

    Rated PG13. Released on DVD April 14, 2009.