Samuel L. Jackson is arch villain The Octopus in The Spirit.

Lionsgate / Odd Lot Entertainment

Now here’s something different in superhero movies: In The Spirit, the Batman-like superhero is dead … but doesn’t realize it.

Based on the 1940s comic book series by Will Eisner, his longtime protégé Frank Miller brings the film to life with the same stylized flash he brought to Sin City and 300, with a script that has the bite of the black-and-white film noir movies of the late 1940s, although with a ticklish bent.

The CGI animation enables The Spirit something no mere mortal could do, leaping across the rooftops of his beloved Central City with a ballet grace, even bouncing along the electrical lines between them like a tightrope walker. The film’s predominant colors are black and gray, but the soles of The Spirit’s shoes blaze neon white, while his tie is an electric red … and so is the blood.

Given that it’s based on a comic book, Miller doesn’t allow his script to take itself too seriously the way The Dark Knight did. When we first meet The Spirit (Gabriel Macht), he’s rescuing a woman who is being attacked by thugs in an alley. She thanks him profusely. But noticing that a couple of corpses now litter the ground around her, The Spirit advises, “Call your shrink if you’ve got one.”

Steely and resolute, Macht solemnly makes his lines sound like they were cut into granite. Once he was police officer Denny Colt, until he was murdered. Now The Spirit is determined to rid Central City of wrongdoers. And yet he hasn’t figured out that he is deceased, nor why, when he is severely beaten or shot, he recovers in a flash. Gee, why does he think he lives in a cemetery?

The Spirit’s other characters are just as far-fetched. Vampish Eva Mendes is Sand Saref, an international jewel thief who, in her younger days, was the love of The Spirit’s life. Things have changed, however. Now, to a slaying victim she yells, “Shut up and bleed.”

Then there’s Samuel L. Jackson as arch villain The Octopus. Wearing a broad-brimmed buccaneer hat and long floppy coat that makes him look pirate-like, The Octopus is a larger-than-life figure who knows The Spirit’s true origins as a dead crime fighter. He is searching for an ancient vase from Greek mythology, the Vase of Heracles, which allegedly holds the juice of immortality handed down by Zeus himself. Unfortunately, the vase was in one of the steamer chests stolen by Sand Saref and her gang which they took for a fortune in gems that was also inside.

The Octopus has cloned a gang for himself in a petri dish, all of them played with camera trickery and great dunderheaded relish by Louis Lombardi. who seems like he’s auditioning for the role of Curly with the Three Stooges. All of them are dressed in black T-shirts emblazoned with each of their names, such as Pathos or Logos. When one of them is ordered to commit hara-kiri, the Japanese rising sun flag appears behind him. At one point, when the petri dish cloning goes wrong, it’s time for high hilarity.

Oh, and there’s also Scarlett Johansson as blond femme fatale Silken Floss with her bat-wing eyelashes, a knife-throwing dancer named Plaster of Paris (Paz Vega) and Lorelei, the Angel of Death (Jamie King). She rises from her watery lair from time to time to warn of impending doom.

It’s as nutty and funny as it sounds, like some ’40s private-eye movie run amuck, but with 1950s autos and today’s cell phones, flak jackets and cloning. Even Dr. Ellen Dolan (Sarah Paulson), who not-so-secretly is in love with The Spirit and tries to keep him on the mend when he’s wounded, hasn’t figured out that he’s a dead man. Her father (Dan Lauria), the police commissioner, hates The Spirit, not because he’s dead but for making his cops look bad with his grandstanding rescues. Those rescues are not too difficult to accomplish when a crook, who has just stolen a man’s briefcase, runs right into The Spirit’s fist, and The Spirit is then immediately surrounded by cameras and an adoring TV reporter. Just when one might think that The Spirit has gotten about as nutty as it can possibly get, The Octopus and Silken Floss turn up in Nazi uniforms to torment The Spirit who is tied to a dentist’s chair.

An odd mix of heroics, adventures, mystery and tongue-in-cheek insanity, The Spirit is a one-of-a-kind original.

****The Spirit

Starring: Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson, Sarah Paulson, Dan Lauria, Paz Vega, Louis Lombardi.

Rated: PG-13, contains violence, sexual situations, brief nudity.

mjanuson@projo.com