I am a hard man to please when it comes to my movies, I want fresh and original, fun and exciting, or heartfelt and sincere, and to be honest The Spirit didn’t feel that way to me.  It tries too hard to pay homage to the original comic, while remaining in the same visually stylistic world as Miller’s previous cinematic creations, 300 and Sin City. However, without Snyder’s masterful use of time in a cinematic world and Rodriguez’s innate ability to tell a story on a number of levels, this film seems to fall flat. 

One of the elements that worked well in the original comics was the everyman aspect of the title character. The Spirit, created by comic legend Will Eisner, is a vigilante on a quest to better the city he loves.  With his classically racist 1930 stereotype of a sidekick he’d battle the bad guys.  The character was human though, he had his faults and was able to die – a characteristic we all share, but when writing this movie it seems Miller was watching Torchwood or X-Men and thought “hey, Captain Jack and Wolverine heal and don’t die, that’d be useful in a crime fighting vigilante.”  While not the biggest mistake since Schumacher put nipples on the Batsuit, it is still one which makes you stop caring about the fate of the hero cause he’ll always survive and he’s nowhere near as awesome as Wolverine or as cocky as Captain Jack so he doesn’t really pull it off. 

The visual style of the film is clearly Miller’s. The high contrast, black and white-ness of it all clearly harks back to the original comic. The blood red tie stands out brilliantly, the green-screen world is a visual feast for the eyes and this is by far the film’s strong point. Sam Jackson (who is always brilliant in everything from a preaching hit man through to a rich businessman who gets eaten by a genetically engineered shark) camps it up for the role of the Octopus, a crazy city coroner who has a thing for costumes. 

So, really, what is The Spirit?  It is a love letter from Miller to a friend and colleague first and foremost, but as a result of the closeness to the material and its creator Miller has made something that won’t universally appeal.  It feels like watching a Sin City rip-off where a great actor like Jackson has to slum it with someone like Eva Mendes, an actress so bad she made Nic Cage look OK-ish in Ghostrider.  Ultimately this is a film to watch when no one else is about, so they don’t make fun of you for looking at it.