The Spirit, no one cried.

Comic legend filmed comic legend? and fails miserably in his directing debut transforms the celebrated author and illustrator Frank Miller the immortal "Spirit" Will Eisner in a visually impressive, but ultimately soulless bore.

 

Comics and movies have much in common because both are community projects. Mag-screen Auteur still so inspired: To be witty piece of film to get, and it must be based on expert assistance to discharge, whether from scriptwriter, cinematographer or actor. And the comic book writer is not much on paper, if he is drawing ungifted: Only by the draftsman, the ink and the Letterer awaken his stories to life.

Sony Pictures
Undead Gangster hunters: comic hero The Spirit (Gabriel Macht)

Frank Miller is within his genre in the fortunate position of being able to work autonomously: His stories are often grim at best, what the comic scene in the last 30 years is to befall, and if Miller himself uses ink to arise schwarzhumorige graphically radical classics like "Sin City", a siebenbändige homage to film noir, to hard, guys with muskelbepackte guttural voices and blonde, großbusige Bombshell which give them their head and constantly make trouble.

Frank Miller, Held every comic lover, is himself an ardent Kinofan, so it was only logical that director Robert Rodriguez Miller as a scriptwriter on board sought, as he faces four years
"Sin City" filmed. A clever move, because the story should be their true voice, her original "Edge" reserve. The stylized, in stark black and rare, but very deep red filmed genre the work belongs to visually interesting comic films ever, and is incidentally a shocking brutal Hard-Boiled-thriller with a lot of oblique joke.

"The Spirit", which this week starts in German cinemas, uses the same aesthetic ingredients, except that this time Frank Miller on the help of an experienced filmmaker and refrained himself in the director chair sat. A fateful decision, as Miller's single-handedly made adaptation of the legendary newspaper strip "The Spirit" is a stillbirth, although colorful and burlesque as "Sin City" is, in addition to the relationship in each contrasting Rodriguez film, however, pale and blutleer effect.

VIDEOS ON FILM

Photo: Sony
Video: bac

Making Of: The film set of "The Spirit"

Trailer and Film Clips

Movie Trailer: "The Spirit"
Film clip: "What are you?"
Film clip: "My rifle is a great city"
Film clip: "You make it is not easy"

It still fits the main character, because the cop Denny Colt, here played by Gabriel Macht is a real undead. Through mysterious circumstances entsteigt murdered in cold blood of his grave and decided after the initial confusion, that he really had nothing better can happen? the underworld and nothing worse. Colt pappt itself, a masterpiece of understatement, a narrow Panzerknacker brand mask over the eyes, pulls the Fedora a little deeper into the forehead and is referred to as the Spirit, as Spirit, to gangster-hunting.

Sounds great? Of course.
First published in 1949 Spirit forefather of the strips of adult comics, Will Eisner, bursting with a laconic wit and wild Draufgängertum contained in all the exaggerated action and macabre violence but also a typical Eisner humanism, a weakness for Allzumenschliches, which in 2005 old master died later in the award-winning Graphic Novels such as "A Contract with God" formulated. Many of the broken superhero figures in modern American comic book and go on Eisner's "Spirit" back, including the critically acclaimed for their sombreness Batman Frank Miller's stories, which, so close the circle, a great admirer and confidant Eisner was.

In Miller's screen version of "Spirit" recognizes the freshly escaped the cemetery Colt soon that his miraculous resurrection of something with the Frankenstein-like experiments of super-villains Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) could have to do. But before any one Quentchen tension and atmosphere may, for quasselt the film with pointless, much too long and, unfortunately, very naïve dialogues in an agony, from which the audience only after tough 110 minutes will be dismissed. Miller may be a maestro, when it comes to movements and kinetics in the comic between the frames of a panel to capture, as director of real movements he any feeling for rhythm is missing.

It would be so much of what we enjoy on the big screen would have been able to celebrate: A whole armada of beautiful women recruited Miller to the pale and forever masked and Spirit operating in the shadows around, especially
Hollywood's new sex symbol Eva Mendes as the Colts verflossene Sand Saref childhood sweetheart, a very entertaining Juwelentick and is delicious in a scene with all their value Estonians on a copy machine settled to her buttocks scan it.

Or Scarlett Johansson, as assessed sadomasochistic Octopus Assistant Silken Floss create all sorts of erotic linings may, to the inevitable Nazi uniform in a ludicrous absurd scene in which one Colt SS Octopus before Hakenkreuzbannern torture. All this would have been terrific comedy, but at least first-class camp can be a feast for all the geeks and nerds, the comics and flash about love drawing. All parties, except those actually lifeless Gabriel Macht pick from everything out their roles, in particular Samuel Jackson, his Octopus perhaps too much in the cartoon overexcited.

THE SPIRIT (USA 2008)

Director: Frank Miller
Screenplay: Frank Miller
Cast: Gabriel Macht, Eva Mendes, Sarah Paulson,
Dan Lauria, Paz Vega, Stana Katic, Scarlett Johansson,
Samuel L. Jackson, Louis Lombardi, Jaime King
Production: Lionsgate, Dark Lot Entertainment, Odd Lot Entertainment
Distributor: Sony
Running time: 102 minutes
Start: 5 February 2009

Official Website

That does through his stylized aesthetics anyway artificial and sterile looking film is not good, because it is neither the hero of the story reveal the original status, nor the director himself completely overwhelmed, in a small, very minor role in short-lived phenomenon occurs . So from a company, as daring and courageous was little more than yawn and anger if the missed chances and opportunities that the substance would have been warranted, Miller would not have gone on an ego trip.

Some of Frank Miller's best comics, including those of Klaus Janson getuschte "Daredevil" series, which made him famous, and his wife Lynn Varley congenially colored Schlachtenepos "300",
in 2006 by Zack Snyder filmed was, incidentally, were not artistic solos, but a common effort, all to great success. "The Spirit" in the U.S. somewhat bashfully started around Christmas, there has so far only 20 million U.S. dollars of lean implementation. Whether for the exhumation of a legend has been worthwhile?