The Spirit – DVD Review

Audience indifference quickly exorcised THE SPIRIT from theatres last year, but now it rises from the grave on home video, including a Two-Disc Special Edition DVD. It is not hard to see why the film bombed at the box office: the one thing it has going for it is the digitized neo-noir stylings that render a high-tech version of an old fashioned black-and-white hard-boiled crime thriller. Unfortunately, this impressivetechnique is not put to good use stylistically; it feels contrived and flat, draining the action of intensity instead of amping it up. Nor is it matched by any artistry in the story-telling, which is thin, or in the performances, which are thick with ham. The familiar stereotypes of the genre (tough guy hero, gruff cops, hot dames, femmes fatale) are rendered as nothing more than stereotypes; basically, this is a 13-tear-old boy’s concept of adult entertainment. At times the patter and over-familiarity border on camp, but THE SPIRIT never manages to satirize the trademarks of its genre; it simply feels like a target for future parody.

DVD DETAILS

The two-disc special edition DVD of THE SPIRIT comes loaded with bonus features, including audio commentary, featurettes, an alternate ending, and a digital copy of the film.
Disc Onebegins with trailers for other releases from Lionsgate, including the ridiculous-looking CRANK. THE SPIRIT is presented in a great widescreen transfer that captures the digitally achieved noir imagery (THE SPIRIT’s one true strenght)  in a way that looks fantastic on a widescreen television. There are options for English 5.1 and 2.0 Dolby Digital, plus English and Spansish subtitles.
There are 28 chapter stops, but the chapter menu sucks: the little arrowheads to advance to the next batch of four chapters ore return to the previous batch are so small you might overlook them, and they are situated so that they look like brackets around the Main Menu button.
Special features consist of an audio commentary by director Frank Miller and producer Deborah Del Prete; the featurettes “Green World” and “Miller on Miller”; an alternative storyboard ending with voiceover by actors Gabriel Macht and Samuel L. Jackson; and a theatrical trailer.

Gabriel Macht as the Spirit
Gabriel Macht as the Spirit

The audio commentary between Frank Miller and Deborah Del Prete details the strategy behind the choices made, such as starting the film in the Spirit’s lair, which is filled with cats (whose reputation for having nine lives foreshadows that the Spirit himself is on his second life, having cheated Death). The dialogue between Miller and Del Prete  is reasonably informative, but they seem so enamored of their good intentions that they are blinded to the shortcomings of the results. (Rather like Don Bluth and Gary Goldman’s audio commentary for TITAN A.E., Miller and Del Prete talk up relatively minor moments as major plot points.)
The first featurette, “Green World,” sounds as if it will be a documentary on using green screen and digital effects to create the world of Central City, but that turns out to be only part of the focus. Instead, “Green World” is a fairly standard promotional piece, providing background on the title character, with the actors saying how much they wanted to work with Frank Miller and Miller expressing his admiration for Will Eisner, who created the “Spirit” comic strip.
“Miller on Miller” is an interview with Frank Miller tracing the growth of his work, starting with his formative years as a child, making drawings of New York City, which helped him develop skills that he would utilize in his professional comic art for such ground-breaking graphic novels as The Dark Knight Returns. Miler also discusses his influences, ranging from comic book artists (Jack Kirby, R. Crumb, Jim Steranko, Neal Adams) to hard-boiled novelists (Dashiel Hammett, Raymond Chandler). Frank Miller’s fans may already be familiar with much of this material, but the uninitiated will find it a useful primer.
The alternate ending features  some animatic imagery intercut with static storyboard drawings, depicting the Spirit tearing Octopus’s dead body to pieces in order to prevent him from resurrecting – a rather non-sensical maneuver considering that the villian has already been blown to pieces by a grenade. It is no surrpise that the studio would not want to end on this moment of gratuitous carnage – which is in keeping with Miller’s other work but somewhat out of step with the slightly goofy tone of THE SPIRIT.
Disc Two contains the digital copy of the film, which can be loaded onto you PC or Mac. A 4×6 insert provides instructions on how to do this.
THE SPIRIT is a bit of a misfire from a talented artist (put most simply, it’s like SIN CITY but not as good), but for those fans who found the film entertaining, the double-disc DVD offers a solid home video presentation with some worthwhile extras.