Spawn
with John Leguizamo, Michael Jai White, Martin Sheen, Theresa Randle, Melinda Clarke, Nicol Williamson
Written by Alan McElroy and Mark A.Z. Dippe
Directed by Mark A.Z. Dippe (New Line)
by Ryk McIntyre
Ah, I love the smell of napalm in the morning! It smells like… Summer Movies! And that pretty much sums up the appeal and the content of Spawn. It just doesn’t get any louder than this. From the pyrotechnic intro, where we have computer-generated flames set over visual samples from Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno, to the final impossible-cape-fluttering-over-the-dark-city ending, this movie actually succeeds in translating a comic book to the screen in a way that remains true to the comic’s fans, as well as attracting the crucial dollars from anyone not in that relative minority. Also, to creator Todd McFarlane’s probable delight, it’s another thing the Big Boyz at Marvel can’t seem to get right.
Our introduction to Al (prior to the fire) Simmons (Michael Jai White) sets up the “good guy doing bad things for good reasons vs bad guys happily doing bad things ’cause they suck” dichotomy. Duped into killing innocents in the course of a mission, Al announces he’s through. Of course, of course, says boss Jason Wynn (Martin Sheen)… we just need you to do one more mission, and, swear to God, it’s not a set-up. Well, it is, and Al’s tortured soul is sucked out of his burning body and taken down a roller-coaster ride inside a funnel of flame to Hell, where a deal is struck with Malebolgia, the demon aspiring to storm the Gates of Heaven, to allow Al to return to Earth, life, and his wife and daughter if he agrees to lead Malebolgia’s Army of Hell against Heaven. Here again, Al gets screwed by the fine print and is deposited back to Earth five years after he left and his wife has re-married his best friend. All that is left for him is to learn about himself and his new Hell-born powers. To this end he is alternately counseled by The Clown (also the demon Violator) (John Leguizamo) who wants to fine-tune him to become the Captain of Evil, and by Cagliostro (Nicol Williamson), who works for the upstairs Guy, and must decide whether Spawn can become Mankind’s Champion, or will need to be eliminated. This all dovetails with Jason Wynn’s plot to infect the world with a particularly nasty bio-weapon, to which only he has the cure. But for a world-class bad guy who covertly runs an evil empire under the disguise of a mere covert government agency, he seems to lack any understanding of who he’s made his deals with. When Wynn learns of Simmons’ return he lets the Clown talk him into having a fail-safe switch surgically inserted into his heart, so that if it stops beating all the bombs go off. It doesn’t occur to him that bacteriological Armageddon might be just what Hell wants. Meanwhile, Terry (Spawn’s best buddy) discovers Jason’s plot and works to expose it. Anyway, I won’t tell you who wins in the end, but it’s a good guess that Spawn II is probably underway as we speak.
The strengths of the movie, and for a summer action-thriller there are many, are in the sets and the effects, pretty much where you’d expect to find them. The city sets borrow heavily from movies like Blade Runner, Batman, and Brazil, with the very effective gloom set above everything and a kind of omni-present rain hitting the filth down at street-level. The computer-generated Hell looks like a Doom-game gone mental, with a chaotic shifting of spatial objects that’s dizzying. It’s worth noting that the 400 effect shots employed 21 companies from around the globe, and yet still this movie had one-half to one-third the budget of most films of its type. Honestly, it is money well-spent if this is the sort of thing you’re shopping for. The Spawn/Violator fight scenes are to die and go to Hell for.
The best thing about the movie is John Leguizamo as the Clown/Violator. As he carts around 20-30 lbs. of foam-rubber costume, crouched over to look about five feet tall and wide, and making it look natural, he gets to spew the best one-liners of the movie like, “You’re still tied to the tracks and the Stupid Train keeps running over you!” or, when he takes Spawn to the graveyard, describing it as “This is where old people go after Florida!” or the P’s It’s A Wonderful Life dis, “Every time you fart another demon is born…Oops! That one must’ve been twins!” His performance is over the top and it’s just what this movie needs to balance out the oppressive angst of the main character vs. the predictable world-conqueror (with whom both Michael Jai White and Martin Sheen, respectively, over-act what lines they’re given to work with), while Nicol Williamson does the best he can with his semi-Connery mentor role. All the rest of the cast are the kind of cardboard thespians that inhabit this genre, and mostly get lost in the sound and fury of the special effects, thank God.
As someone sillier than I once said, “This is the sort of thing you’ll like, if you like this sort of thing!” And that pretty much describes Spawn, Faustian eye-candy for those who think Batman is a wimp who needs to take off the gloves and let loose once in a while.
