Tuesday: December 8

Oftentimes I'm asked which actors and actresses I enjoy watching in movies. When I answer, most people have no idea about whom I'm speaking because I tend to shy away from the usual suspects and my choices such as Roman Duris, Louis Garrel, Vincent Cassel, Monica Belluci, Romola Garai, etc. usually draw blank stares. Among American performers who fall into this category is Gabriel Macht. I first became aware of him after his guest appearance on "Sex and the City" but I really became a fan of his in earnest in 2001 after seeing him in both American Outlaws and Behind Enemy Lines. Over the next several years, I watched him in supporting roles in great movies (The Good Shepherd), good movies (A Love Song for Bobby Long) and middling ones (The Recruit). He was the best thing in the romantic comedy Because I Said So (which depending on one's point of view is either a good thing or not). So when I read that he finally had landed a leading role in a movie I was excited. Then The Spirit opened, got terrible reviews, and bombed big time at the box office. Still, it was directed by Frank Miller and I had admired his contributions to Sin City, so I kept thinking "how bad could this movie be?" Besides, a lot of the time, I find myself enamored of a movie that other critics have disliked.

So I rented the DVD of The Spirit, popped it in and ... As the film opened, I was admiring of the decor and the look of the movie. But then, well, it became clear that Frank Miller without Robert Rodriguez was like oil without vinegar in a salad dressing.

In the comics created by Will Eisner, the character of Denny Colt becomes the Spirit after being shot and left in a kind of limbo -- not really dead, but not really alive either. The original ran for a dozen years between 1940 and 1952 but in 2007, DC Comics resurrected the character and someone must have hit on the idea that making a movie would be a good thing. Trouble is that Miller's screenplay doesn't exactly contemporize the character or his story. Instead, Miller treats the material like a 1940s melodrama cum film noir. As a director, he's clearly lacking the skill set to deal with actors, while as a visual artist, he crafts some attractive-looking sequences.

The performers are all at sea, performing as if different films. Macht, who can be charming and heroic, comes across as merely dull. Samuel L. Jackson overplays and hams it up as the villain known as the Octopuss -- and his campy performance makes some of the TV actors from the old "Batman" show look as if they were doing Shakespeare. The femme fatales, including Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson, and Jamie King, are all defeated by the material.

I went into watching this movie with the expectations that I would find something in it that I could appreciate, but I was wrong. The movie isn't the worst I've ever seen, but it is pretty close.

Rating: D-