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Review: The Spirit

Awful on every level

By PETER KEOUGH | December 23, 2008

0.0 Stars

VIDEO: The trailer for The Spirit

Since we've now reached late December, it's safe to say that Frank Miller's The Spirit is the worst movie I will see all year.

I am not familiar with the Walt Eisner comic hero, and so I say this not because the film ruins a cult favorite but because it is awful on every level. Okay, the images, reprising the pseudo-noir-expressionism of Miller & Rodriguez's Sin City (in a PG-13 version), can be distracting. But the voiceover narration, the expository dialogue, the witless banter, and the portentous piffle bury them. It's like the corniest TV Batman episode ever made.

Gabriel Macht has all the charisma of the W.B. Mason guy in the title role of a cop brought back from the dead and now a superhero fighting evil, whose incarnations include Samuel Jackson as Octopus and Scarlett Johansson as Silken Floss, the both of them putting in the worst performances of their careers — which is saying something. What really broke my spirit? A set-up for a sequel and the promise to "start from scratch."

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Topics: Reviews , Scarlett Johansson, Frank Miller, Frank Miller, More

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