The Spirit — PG-13

The story

Central City, USA, has lots of crime. More work for Police Commissioner Dolan (Dan Lourie), crime-fighting hero The Spirit (Gabriel Macht), rookie Officer Morgenstern (Stana Katic), and her police colleagues. Chief criminal is The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson). He and criminal associate Silken Floss (Scarlet Johansson) seek an ancient Greek vase containing the blood of Heracles. Swallowing the blood confers immortality, what The Octopus needs to become King of the World. The Spirit's childhood girlfriend Sand Serif (Eva Mendes) covets the vase. Corrupt businessman Donenfeld (Richard Portnow) has the vase. When he turns up dead, Commissioner Dolan suspects Sand Serif.

Can The Spirit clear his girlfriend's name? Will he learn his own history? How are he and The Octopus alike? Why did you come to this stupid movie?

The actors

Pity the actors in this mess of a movie. The Spirit is a "skirt-chaser" who's left many broken hearts, but as emotionless Gabriel Macht plays him, it's hard to imagine any woman being interested. Sarah Paulson as Ellen Dolan, M.D., says she is smitten, but provides scant evidence. Eva Mendes and Scarlet Johansson as Sand Serif and Silken Floss pose and vamp, but with little conviction. Samuel L. Jackson, the villainous Octopus, hams it up but isn't funny. He hits The Spirit with a toilet seat and says, "Toilets are always funny." Not this time.

Others in the spirit-less cast include Jaime King as Lorelei Rex, underwater messenger of death. Louis Lombardo plays Pathos and a dozen other witless characters, all clones of himself. Director/writer Frank Miller has a cameo. But Arthur the Cat is good. Only he should list this one on his resume.

Other comments

"The Spirit" will be hard to beat as Worst Movie of 2009. Director/writer Frank Miller, creator of graphic novels "Sin City" and "300" - both made into films - pays homage in "The Spirit" to its creator, the great graphic artist Will Eisner. Visually, the film suggests Eisner's late 1930s/1940s style. It's noir-ish and dark, slashed with bright red (The Spirit's necktie), odd camera angles and stylish silhouetted black and white. But that's not enough to sustain interest for 103 minutes. The script, perhaps intended to be arch, is wooden, clunky and cliché-ridden. It's talky and boring. Gabriel Macht is long-winded as The Spirit and film narrator. Samuel L. Jackson is garrulous and tedious as The Octopus. All the characters are tedious - except Arthur the Cat who has no lines.

"The Spirit" is PG-13 for intense sequences of stylized violence and action, sex and brief nudity. It's a disappointment. Fans of Frank Miller and Will Eisner may want to see it, but I'd advise others to wait for the DVD or, better yet, avoid it altogether. I wish I had.

Final words

Twelve months from now,

Recall I said it here,

"The Spirit" will win

"Worst Movie of the Year."