Putting it plainly, 'The Spirit' is a 'forgettable' adaptation of Will Eisner's 1940s comic of the same name, as it turns the writer's iconic work into an agonizingly awkward caricature.

The film's director, Frank Miller has fumbled more than once both in the basic concept as well as in the adaptation of it. His attempt to filter the Forties through a contemporarily sarcastic point of view is the gravest mistake!

The film has a dead cop brought back to life as 'The Spirit' (Gabriel Macht), who battles a megalomaniac scientist, the Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson). As the so-called hero, Gabriel Macht's insipid Spirit, goes around the city to fight crime, it encounters and seduces one beautiful female after the other - Sand Saref (Eva Mendes), Silken Floss
(Scarlett Johansson), Plaster of Paris (Paz Vega) and Lorelei (Jaime King), and a gorgeous surgeon Ellen Dolan (Sarah Paulson).

The fact that the Spirit gets a superpower - a healing factor - only distances the plot from becoming anything close to human. In a case of disasters galore, the actors have been made to deliver their unnatural-sounding lines as if they are members of some imprudent ultramodern theater group!

Great photography and excellent design of the film appear to be more of a waste - they can do little to uplift the film and cover up for a mishandled adaptation!