The Phantom

The movie is wonderfully entertaining, red-blooded and rousing, and with a production design that makes it uncommonly handsome.

The Nintendo generation may not “get” The Phantom any more than those original Thirties fans would have understood Bruce Wayne's tortured psyche, but that aside, Wincer's updating of an old warhorse is lovingly done. It's a Saturday afternoon matinee for the Nineties, 60 years old and totally new.

Whether the film excites you or not, it does excel with some glossy art direction that looks suitably slick in a quality picture transfer. Clear and sharp, this is a pleasure to watch.

While reviving the "The Phantom" may have seemed like a good idea at the time, it's one comic book superhero that just doesn't translate that well to the screen. [7 June 1996, p.46]

Essentially, this is RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK without the narrative savvy and self-referential cleverness.

Based on the comic strip created in 1936 by Lee Falk, The Phantom is a handsomely produced, numbingly impersonal adventure film that fails to do anything new with the format. [7 June 1996, p.49]

Sorry, Phantom, but the purple suit has got to go. No amount of buff bod can make an audience take a superhero in bright purple seriously...And while we're at it, that script has got to go, too. Screenwriter Jeffrey Boam apparently studied the first two "Indiana Jones" movies so thoroughly -- so that he could write "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" -- that he's carried many of the motifs to "The Phantom." The result is not breathtaking excitement, but rather a stunning lack of originality. [7 June 1996]

I can say that it is not a bad movie, especially for its time, but I expected more!