As an action director Miller is almost as clumsy as Baz Luhrmann, but he's far from naïve, and presumably the delirium of The Spirit is exactly what he intended.
Comment
02/13/09
The Spirit (2008)
15
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:108
Fresh:16
Rotten:92
Average Rating:3.6/10
Consensus: Though its visuals are unique, The Spirit's plot is almost incomprehensible, the dialogue is ludicrously mannered, and the characters are unmemorable.
Runtime: 1 hr 48 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
US Box Office: $19,781,879
Synopsis: Adapted from the legendary comic strip, THE SPIRIT is a classic action-adventure-romance told by genre-twister FRANK MILLER (creator of 300 and SIN CITY). It is the story of a former rookie cop... [More]
Starring: Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Eva Mendes
Director: Frank Miller
Reviews for The Spirit
Top CriticMiller's background as an artist was undoubtedly an important factor in achieving the striking visual effects. It's just when the human characters dominate the action that the film sinks like a stone.
02/06/09
Top CriticThe Spirit is hollow, with a convoluted plot, and Miller has clearly opted for visual style over thematic depth.
01/29/09
Top CriticIf Frank Miller is aiming for camp, he's playing cricket with a sledgehammer
08/26/09
Certifiably, but agreeably, insane, "The Spirit" plays like "Dick Tracy" on brown acid. Dialogue is bleated, not spoken. Artifacts are used as snuggle blankets. And it's aggressively bizarre, but it's the definition of guilty-pleasure entertainment.
06/17/09
No amount of flash can camouflage the career-low performances, the scaffolding where characterisation should be, the pitiful cod '40s dialogue, the monstrously fumbled comedy.
05/12/09
More interested in being a technical marvel than a coherent story.
04/29/09
Soa como uma mistura desajeitada de filme noir e da série de tevê Batman produzida na década de 60.
03/20/09
It's a plot from the 'more is more' school of scriptwriting and while the live action crossed with stylised graphic novel effect is sublime, it can't distract from the clunkiness of it all.
01/30/09
Top CriticAs it went on, I discovered that it had a kind of appealingly dumb, playful quality.
01/09/09
Miller's directing chops, er, chop, is non-existent, offering up a muck of amateurish posturing, weak storyline and tedious characters. As for the title? Ouch, that's some irony.
01/08/09
Eva Mendes is the new Raquel Welch but even Raquel/Eva can't make this movie work
01/06/09
Is it trying to be a parody of itself?
01/06/09
Now that they've gone and made Batman all serious and good, the campy comics hero movie mantle has been taken up by The Spirit.
01/05/09
In their first battle, The Octopus smashes a toilet over The Spirit's head, laughs maniacally, and declares, "Toilets are always funny!" This movie would know: It clearly deserves to be flushed down one.
01/05/09
Displaying admirable love for pulp material and striking enviably sexy poses, but missing the emotional resonance, zeitgeist-catching populism and mainstream thrills which found movie franchises.
01/05/09
Top CriticEvery once in a while a genuine turkey escapes the coop, bereft of charm or wit, utterly lacking in technical prowess, integrity or intelligence. ‘The Spirit’ is such a film.
01/05/09
Miller shoots it in the inky graphic style of Sin City, but he clearly hasn't a clue how to stage a scene, or shoot it, and he singly fails to animate his actors.
01/05/09
Top CriticFrank Miller's adaptation of the antique comic strip by Will Eisner is brash, noisy and so alarmingly ill-paced that it should, by rights, come with a software package that allows viewers to recut it as they see fit.
01/05/09
Top CriticThe Spirit’s greatest crime is that it is so boring – encapsulated in a scene where the Spirit and the Octopus slug it out for an eternity as both are sucked into treacly mud.
01/05/09
Latest News for The Spirit
April 13, 2009:
RT on DVD: Frank Miller Talks The Spirit, Michel Gondry Releases New Music Video DVD
It's a light week for home video entertainment, but never fear -- RT on DVD is here! We'll kick things off with the biggest title of the week: Frank Miller's The Spirit, which... More...
January 10, 2009:
ASpiritedLife.com: The Eva Mendes Spirit Interview: Kicking Ass And Revealing Some Too 
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January 04, 2009:
TeenDirectory.net: Erotic sleuthing laced with backwards babes, and Paulson on female doormat duty while Scarlett's shrewdie hangs with a murderous gang of homicidal fattie clones, like an underworld Madonna bossing an obedient crew of paunchy boy toys.
More...
December 29, 2008:
Visually spectacular adaptation of Will Eisner's legendary comics creation is all Frank Miller and very little Eisner. Part crime thriller, part superhero origin story, it opts for bombastic weirdness rather than the comic's trademark humanism.
More...
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