new line / 1997 / 1 : 37 / pg-13 ( language , violence , disturbing religious overtones , crude sex humor ) cast : john leguizamo ; michael jai white ; martin sheen ; theresa randle ; melinda clarke ; miko hughes ; sydni beaudoin ; nicol williamson ; d . b . sweeney director : mark a . z . dippe screenplay : alan mcelroy " spawn " features good guys , bad guys , lots of fighting , bloody violence , a leather-clad machine gun chick , gooey , self-healing bullet holes , scatological humor and a man-eating monster . it not only appears to have been tailor made for a swarm of 12- and 13-year-old boys , it appears to have been made by them . in a classic example of telling and not showing , " spawn " opens with a truckload of mumbo jumbo about forces of darkness , forces of light and how " men are the ones who create evil on earth . " so much for a message . the movie then lurches forward into the plight of al simmons ( michael jai white ) , a government assassin/operative who is murdered by diabolical boss jason wynn ( martin sheen , who plays all of his scenes like an oscar clip ) while on a top secret mission in a north korean biological weapons plant . simmons goes to hell and back , after making a deal with satan himself -- if he agrees to command the devil's army to overtake the world , he'll be allowed to return to earth to see his wife wanda ( underused theresa randle ) and little girl cyan ( sydni beaudoin ) . of course , seeing as how five years has passed , wanda has fallen for -- and married -- simmons' partner ( d . b . sweeney ) . his , uh , shoulder to cry on comes in the form of clown ( john leguizamo ) , a disgustingly disproportioned minion of satan's . clown manipulates simmons , now in superhuman spawn form , into a stand off with wynn . wynn , who thinks he is in league with the double-dealing clown , recognizes spawn as a threat and undergoes an operation where a bomb is placed on his heart -- when it stops beating , major cities around the world will detonate , causing the leak of a disease that " makes the ebola virus look like a skin rash . " 
