Spewn

Spawn: The Movie has been on my list for a while, now I can cross it off. I knew it as a comic adaptation special-effects action film, with John Leguizano as a demon clown. When I found out that the star was our new favorite, Michael Jai White, it moved to the top of the list.

White plays an assassin for hire who tries to retire and gets killed by his boss, Martin Sheen, for his troubles. He winds up in Hell, which was the idea all along. The arch-demon Malbogia wants him to lead his demon army. So he is sent back to earth, still with his skin burned off but with a very cool CGI costume. His demonic overseer is an evil clown, played by John Leguizano under a ton of makeup and body padding. He is gross, evil and funny, but mostly gross.

I think that covers the plot. The rest of the movie has White learning about the powers of his CGI armor and cape. This is quite cool, especially the cape, which billows in huge tatters all around. It doesn't get as much play as it should. The fight scenes could be much better, considering White's awesome martial arts skills. He has a very cool gothic ruined cathedral hideout.

On the downside, the scenes in Hell are ludicrously poor. The demon Malbogia has a low polygon count, crudely texture mapped, and wouldn't look impressive in an 8-bit video game. The motivations are strange, too. White is a nice guy (for an assassin). Why did he get chosen to lead the armies of Hell? It's not a gig he wants or looks to be any good at.

I'm going to have to say this was not very good. Leguizano's voice work was nothing special, White's face was covered by makeup and his skills wasted by weak action directing. Nice CGI costume is about all I can say.