Trailer:
"Simmons is dead. I now name you Spawn. Leader of hells army."
The Mask ended up coming up as roses for Dark Horse, so in comparison it should have been a simple task to adapt one of Image Comics most well known characters….right? Apparently it is not as easy as it looks as Spawn quickly becomes a convoluted and downright mess of a movie.
The first mistake the film makes is very early on with the casting of the main character. No name actor Michael Jai White tries his hardest to fill the shoes of the complex anti-hero but just does not have the acting experience or range to realistically and emotionally pull him off. Which is a shame because they could have really done something with his torn conscious about what is right and wrong. Instead they just found an actor who was good as snarling generic dialogue.
Lets get to the meat of this movie. It starts out with an assassin by the name of Al Simmons (Michael Jai White) who decides that the he is too kind hearted for the assassin biz. His boss, Jason Wynn, isn’t too happy about it and decides to kill him for no logical reason other than the fact he is pissed that he's quitting. It’s not like he had any information that could jeopardize his "super secret" plan.
And what is that plan exactly? Well Wynn happens to be working with the devil to prepare an invasion of the earth, which will involve the release of a toxic virus. But that is not all. Good ol’ Satan will also invade with an army. Who does he choose to lead this army? Well Al Simmons of course. Now hold on folks, this is where it gets complicated. Let me break it down for you
Al Simmons quits being an assassin because he is too kind hearted. The devil recruits him because he is heartless. One of these two is an idiot. The devil for not realizing Simmons is a good guy when he QUIT HIS JOB or Al Simmons for subconsciously still wanting to kill people apparently. Either way it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Anyways Simmons is chosen as a leader of this army and sent back to earth with all new powers to create armor that shape shifts into spikes, bikes, and chains. The effects in the movie are pretty solid and a lot of the stuff the FX team does is very impressive, even nearly ten years later. It is when they are playing on their computer that the filmmakers are at their best.
To watch over Simmons, Satan sends his demon nanny, a clown-like character that they sometimes refer to as The Clown, and other times as “The Violator”. Since the writers don’t seem to care about the characters name, neither will I, so we’ll just refer to him as Clowvolator.
Now I guess Spawn’s nanny could be considered the main villain here and in full honesty there has never been a less intimidating and more annoying villain than what is here. My guess is the makers were going for a character in likeness to the joker but Clowvolator is so cartoonish and silly. So much that he feels like he belongs more in the Mask than a Spawn film. He is nothing but a series of gross out jokes and bad puns that add nothing to his convoluted schemes to back stab Spawn.
Then there is his transformation into the “Demonic” form, which on the flip side of Spawn’s effects looks like a CGI catastrophe. The movements are unbelievable and lack any fluidness to them. At times he looks as if he were simply concept CGI they just decided to put into the final version.
The secondary villain is obviously Martin Sheen’s character of Wynn who is a fairly uninspired baddie. He is made of solid cliché that even Sheen’s acting talent cannot save him. He is just a generic political evil figure and not even any fun to watch.
Spawn is also followed around by this weird Jesus cowboy figure. He appears to have similar powers to Spawn that aren’t exactly explained fully. This leaves the audience to assume that he was a previous failed attempt by the devil to create a leader for his demon army. Clearly it didn’t work the first time, so Satan must be a terrible judge of character if his demon generals keep walking out on him.
So there you have it. Bad acting and horribly scripted. The only redeemable quality is that some of the special effects legitimately look really cool. In the end though this is a classic case of the rated R superhero film where it tries so hard to be “mature” that its left with a substantial amount of gore and near no substance.
FINAL RATING: 2/10- (20%)
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