Spawn - Director's Cut

Prior to an infernal makeover that buries his sneer beneath blistered prosthetics, Michael Jai White's Spawn is an unthinking and unrepentant agent of American imperialism. He's a CIA operative who mechanically infiltrates allied nations to (unnecessarily) shred civilians with submachine gun fire before racking up further scores of jet-detonating collateral damage. This wet work is sloppy too, instantly acknowledged by cable news reporters then beamed around an unappreciative world. White carries himself in and around these exterminations like a keyed-in prize fighter, outwardly portraying both a mirthless impatience and a palpable loathing for everyone around him. It comes as no surprise then that White previously essayed an intense, unblinking take on boxer Mike Tyson for an HBO TV movie. To director Mark AZ Dippé's credit, even when burned to a crisp and sheathed in a shining carapace bristling with spiked protrusions, White's superman retains these testosterone-fuelled frustrations. Trapped in the middle of a cataclysmic war between heaven and hell, Spawn simply couldn't care less. 

This occult anti-hero doesn't even flinch when John Leguizamo's drooling Clown more-or-less tells him that he's The Antichrist; a monstrous psychopath designed then steered through a lifetime of extrajudicial murder to better prepare him for his afterlife leading Satan's armies in The Battle of Armageddon. Spawn's too busy stockpiling chopped-up, boutique assault rifles (on loan from Bad Boys) so that he can perforate anonymous henchmen. Dippé's film is unashamedly adolescent in this respect. It's not that this comic book adaptation fails to imbue its characters with any real depth or dimensionality, it doesn't even try. Spawn is best contextualised then as the vehicle through which a certified gold CD soundtrack (featuring contributions that united disparate entities like The Prodigy with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello) was sold. Truly a moment for teenage boys everywhere. The pin-up art style of Spawn creator Todd McFarlane does carry over from the printed page though, translated here into flowing, computer-generated effects that range from still impressive to excretable. Often the problem is simply execution: the technology and mid-range special effects budgets available in the mid-1990s completely failing in their attempts to manufacture sustained, third-act showdowns premised on enormous, abyssal vistas.