Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

In Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, we are reunited with Johnny Blaze (played once again by Nicolas Cage), the motorcycle stuntman who unwisely made a deal with the devil in the earlier movie, and is now cursed to become the Ghost Rider whenever evil is around. The Ghost Rider is a demonic biker with a flaming skull for a head, making him look like he escaped from the cover of a heavy metal album, or maybe a 14-year-old boy's sketchbook.

If you remember 2007's Ghost Rider movie, you are a better man than I, as I only have a few vague memories of watching it during its opening weekend. However, when looking back on my review, I see that I opened it by saying that it was "one of the silliest and goofiest movies to come along in many a moon". That means it must have left some kind of impression on me at the time. I also halfheartedly complemented the movie for having a "light and slightly humorous feel to go along with the silliness of the plot". I think that right there spells out the problem with the newest film. Directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Gamer) take this stuff too seriously for the most part. This is a movie about Nicolas Cage turning into a biker with a flaming skull head, and a motorcycle that leaves a trail of fire in its wake, so he can battle Satan. The only way you can approach that idea is with a strong sense of irony. The film does have its moments of fun (there's a funny gag involving a Twinkie), but they're few and far between in a plot we care nothing about.

Ah, the plot. This is going to be fun to recount, as I don't think I'm clear on all the details, but I'll do my best. Johnny Blaze has been in hiding since the last movie, and has shut himself away from all his friends and family. The movie describes it that Johnny is on a personal quest to find a way to free himself of the curse of the Ghost Rider, but in reality, none of the original actors except for Cage agreed to come back for the sequel. Johnny is approached by a motorcycle riding, gun-toting holy man named Moreau (Idris Elba), who somehow knows who Johnny is, and also about his deal with the Devil, although how he came upon this knowledge is not explained. However, Moreau just might know how to lift the curse of the Ghost Rider, so that Johnny can be normal again. If he can complete a certain task, Moreau will give him all the answers.

The task involves a small boy named Danny (Fergus Riordan), who is being hunted down by Satan himself, who currently walks the Earth in the guise of a human by the name of Roarke (Ciaran Hinds, who at times resembles an even doughier Robert De Niro in this movie). Danny and his mother, Nadya (Violante Placido), are on the run from Satan's henchmen, which seem to comprise of some generic thugs, and Nadya's lowlife ex-boyfriend (Johnny Whitworth). Imagine you're the Devil, and you have to hunt down this child in order to perform some kind of Satanic ceremony. Would you really need hired help? Couldn't he just use his powers to track the kid down faster? The movie's a bit sketchy on this issue, as Roarke claims that he's weak in human form, yet in one scene, he somehow has the ability to put a spell on Danny over the telephone, so that the Ghost Rider won't be able to sense him and track him down. (He still finds him easily enough, though.)

So, we have a boy in danger, Satan walking on Earth and trying to start a new reign of evil through an ancient ceremony, and Johnny Blaze trying to free himself from a demonic curse. All of these elements could work, but Spirit of Vengeance ends up being deadly dull. I had a big problem with the Ghost Rider himself. Aside from his appearance, nothing really stands out about him. He's a walking special effect with no personality, or even any clever catchphrases. But then, maybe that has to do with the fact that his secret identity is Johnny Blaze, who didn't strike me as being that interesting either. Nicolas Cage tries to liven the character up with some of his trademark overacting, but he's fighting a losing battle against a screenplay that forgot to give its hero any compelling features, let alone a reason to be interested in him.

This is just an odd film all around. The plot tends to leave us in the dark for far longer than it should. (We don't find out why the Devil is after Danny until long after the chase has begun.) There are also some oddly edited sequences, such as the scene when the Ghost Rider picks up a thug, draws him close and then...Well, the movie just lingers on close ups of the Rider and the thug's faces for far too long. With the right music and mood, you could be fooled into thinking it was going to become a romantic moment. There are a lot of jarring edits, or scenes that easily could have or should have been left on the cutting room floor, which leads me to believe that either this movie was severely tampered with by the studio, or directors Neveldine and Taylor really have no idea what they're doing.

The motto during the making of Spirit of Vengeance seems to have been throw in more noise and shots of a flaming skull head in order to kill time. As you can imagine, it doesn't take long for that approach to get annoying. Even with all that noise, we still find ourselves commenting on the glaring holes this movie never bothers to explain. Like, why do the chains that the Ghost Rider use as weapons cause some people to burst into flames upon touching them, while others, it just wraps around them? And why does a grenade send Ghost Rider flying backwards, yet a direct hit from a missile barely phase him? And could I be putting more thought to this stuff than the filmmakers did? Most likely, yes.

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