Subject: Review: Spawn (1997)

From: Phil St-Germain<[email-masked]>
Date: 6 Aug 1997 16:18:23 GMT

Spawn
Horror/science-fiction/comedy

5.0 out of 10, ** out of ****

Opening everywhere on 97/08/01
Directed by Mark A.Z. Dippé
Starring Michael Jai White, John Leguizamo, Martin Sheen, Nicol 
Williamson, D.B. Sweeney.
Written by Allan McElroy
Produced by Clint Goldman

Here is the long-awaited movie adaptation from the SUPER popular comic 
book series created by Todd McFarlane (who was working with Marvel before).
The film should please comic book lovers... but as for others, it's more
likely to be a mess.

A character coming from hell to lead demon hordes to win the war against 
humans, Spawn decides to have his own vengence on Jason Wynn (Martin 
Sheen), who killed him five years before, sending him at the devil's 
domain. But Spawn, an heavily armed, martial arts master superhero, 
decides to take another direction: to use what's left of his humanity and 
his superpowers to fight against the forces from Hell.

Along the way, he'll have a so-called "friend", Violator, an evil clown 
who seems to enjoy to double-cross people, as Spawn will see.

For Spawn fans, the story won't be hard to understand, and they're likely 
to enjoy the impressive special effects. But for those unfamiliar with 
the comic strip, they may have an Hell of a time if special effects 
aren't their cup of tea...

We'll start by discussing the movie's positive points. Of course, the 
special effects. They come from the same team who worked on The Abyss and 
The Terminator between others. They're really well done, although as a 
whole they are almost TOO present, and the "awe" factor is gone. Still, 
we can't take that away from the film: the visual effects are very good, 
and often surprising. The three main actors offer pretty decent 
performance, but the show isn't them: it's the special effects 
themselves.

Now, with the problems. The story is built for the person who is familiar 
with Spawn and it's world and characters. It's not necessarily a bad 
thing... but for people (like me) not very familiar to it, it's 
needlessly convoluted. I read some Spawn comic books already, but even 
then, the screenplay lacks a stronger sense of construction. The 
character of John Leguizamo, Violator, isn't very effective. Weither he 
is disgusting, playing the stand-up comic or just walking around 
insulting people, a lot of his lines fall flat, without much impact. But 
that's pretty much how he is in the comic book, so it's not a major flaw.

All in all, I'd recommend this film to Spawn lovers everywhere, and 
movie-goers whose love of special effects is very important. As far as 
superhero fare goes, I liked the likes of Batman, Superman and The Shadow 
way better, but that doesn't mean everyone will agree with me...

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