Cert: 15. Dir: Frank Miller.

Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Eva Mendes

Frank Miller is an influential artist who's already had of several of his graphic novels adapted into the movies 300, Sin City and Daredevil. He co-directed Sin City with Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino and this gave him such a taste for film that he signed on to write and direct The Spirit by himself.

Based in a 1930's world of violent crime and men in hats, The Spirit was originally created by Will Eisner, one of Miller's favourite authors, so it's no coincidence that their work bears so many similarities. Gabriel Macht plays The Spirit; a dead cop brought mysteriously back to life who chooses to protect Central City in ways he couldn't when he was just a mere mortal.

Prerequisites for a superhero move, number 1. Mean and moody lead? Check!

Dressed in a black suit, black hat and screaming red tie, he runs across rooftops like Batman (Miller wrote some of the best Batman graphic novels) saving pretty damsels from the seedy criminal underbelly controlled by The Octopus (Jackson). The Spirit lives a lonely existence and his only real contact comes in the form of stray cats and belligerent cops who are tired of him getting their friends killed.

Samuel L. Jackson embodies a villain who was just a pair of gloves in Eisner's comic and he seems to have taken the word too literally. His eyebrows work harder than Roger Moore's at the peak of Bond and you wonder if Miller's only direction to Jackson was to cackle loudly whilst bugging out his eyes. Jackson is obviously having a whale of a time - sadly the audience are not.

Rumours that Bill Murray actually whispered "don't make this film" into Scarlett's ear are, in fact, completely made up

Playing second fiddle to The Octopus is the slightly smarter, but just as unethical, Silken Floss. Since she's played by Scarlett Johansson and this is a Frank Miller film, her costumes make the word 'fetish' seem too gentle a term. Her performance is stilted at best. The rest of female cast fare no better, wearing tight dresses whilst spouting comic book lines that work as pastiche but never let the characters come to life. Miller may as well have shot the film silent and stuck on speech bubbles.