The Spirit

I remember seeing the trailers for this before it released and I remember thinking it was just a bad Sin City knock off. Especially since it was directed by Frank Miller. And the first 10 minutes that's exactly what it is.

But then Samuel L Jackson turns up and suddenly the film is a comedy. After that it's more like a parody of Frank Miller's work. The main character talks to himself way too much. Not just internal monologues, but actually talking out loud to himself. He's also kind of crap. His powers seem to be not dying, and seducing every woman he meets. And cats follow him around for some reason. He throws snowballs at people.

Sam Jackson is a wonder in this film. Each of his scenes could come from a different movie, it's so bizarre. One scene is just him staring at this little head on a foot creature, repeating the line "That is so damn weird". The next time we see him he's dressed as a Nazi and he's accompanied by a French belly dancer.

The dialogue is ridiculous, and that would be a negative if the film was trying to be serious. But more often than not it's played for laughs. There's a scene where a girl's father, who's a cop, has been shot. She's obviously upset. Her boyfriend wants to be a cop when he's older, so she's upset about that too. I think the exact line was;

"What, just so some drunk can mouth off and shoot you dead? You think I want that for you? No! I want diamonds and sports cars and money and lots of it!"

Seriously, Eva Mendes plays the shallowest character ever in this film. Her entire motivation is "Ooooh, shiny things!".

There's so much wrong with this film and it would be so bad if it wasn't so entertaining.