Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengence Review
The Drone Ranger rides again.
This movie was actually slightly improved over the last one, but honestly it is on the level of being held under water for 10 minutes instead of 20. At the end of the day you have still drowned in a lake of plot holes, bad acting, and eardrum damaging dialog, which is unfortunate as Ghost Rider is one of my favorite comic book characters and I feel he is really cool with an interesting story. (Ghost Rider image courtesy of the Marvel Comic T Shirts)
Before getting into the meat of this flick I thought it worth looking into the two directors, Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine, and seeing if they had produced anything worth anything. The answer is more or less a resounding no. They are attached at the hip and have almost exactly the same film credits: Crank, Crank II, Gamer, and Jonah Hex are considered their premier releases. The funny thing is other than that they seem to have only technical credits. Brian Taylor in particular is mostly listed as a camera man on a bunch of documentaries. I am all for giving up and coming directors a chance, but given that this film had a $75 million dollar budget this sounds like the equivalent of getting the guy who mops up the operating room floor to perform a heart transplant. If this is how Hyde Park feels they need to flush their money give me 1/3rd the budget and I can probably make something at least as good.
It is rarely a good sign when a movie starts in the first two minutes with a gaping plot hole, and at first I was surprised at something so dumb so early in. However, within 40 minutes I realized the entire script was composed almost entirely of plot holes, like Swiss cheese without the flavor. The plot holes kept growing and spawning new plot holes like a fast acting virus, and by the end of the movie my brain had been so inundated by them that I stopped noticing them as they flew past the screen (actually, in a strange way kind of a brilliant movie making strategy. If your writers are too dumb (Scott M. Gimple-El Tigre: the Adventures of Manny Riviera (??? A cartoon I guess), Filmore!, Pepper Ann. That’s three “major” credits since 1997 and Seth Hoffman-Prison Break, Prison Break the Final Break, House M.D.) to avoid gaping craters in the script just add more until they all kind of blur together. I just don’t credit the directors with making an active decision to pursue the plan. Looks like a happy coincidence).
If I had the energy to keep score I think the one thing this movie would have had to compete with the massive number of plot holes would be the also massive number of completely worthless and non contributing scenes. They seem to fall into the two categories of either showing how cool Nicholas Cage is on a motorcycle or burning up the remaining special effects budget with extra CGI.
And of course the final nail in the proverbial coffin would have to be the monotone drone of Nicholas Cage (Con Air, Face Off, Season of the Witch, Drive Angry). Most of this movie he does in his trademark deadpan robot like (for lack of a better term) acting. To be fair, there are a couple scenes where he does seem to emote a little, but they both seem like he is doing them under protest and they were both CGI enhanced. I think I figured out why his last few roles have been so bad in comparison to earlier movies like Raising Arizona and Kiss of Death: he can only really act when he doesn’t play tough good guys. When he is a hardened lone wolf hero something twitches in his brain and he thinks the way to manifest the character is to pretend he is a corpse. Honestly, Chuckie emotes better.
I will say the camera work was impressive, but by that I mean it was impressive for a skateboard video. In fact, the whole film felt like an action sports video with big action explosions interspersed with a montage of guys drinking beer and yelling at each other. There were a couple really cool camera shots, but not enough to make things up for all the jumbled low camera YouTube worthy filming. Some of the action was also pretty cool, but when it is established in the first action scene that the Ghost Rider is more or less impervious to any kind of attack or weapon it exhausts all the excitement in the scene like a Roofie colonic. At that point it really doesn’t matter how many hundreds of armed mercenaries you send at him. The audience knows all the bullets, grenades, and bunker buster rockets are going to pass right through him with all the impact of a wet fart.
The story, from what I could discern by looking past all the obscuring plot holes, is once more Johnny Blaze (now apparently not stopped by daylight) cursed with being Ghost Rider. The Devil (Ciaran Hinds-the Road to Perdition, Munich, There Will Be Blood, The Debt) has had a kid (Fergus Riordan-I Want to be a Soldier, Fragile) and wants him to take over the family business or something. Instead of simply using his powers to, you know, just take him away he hires a crew of mercenaries who attack a monastery and start the long, long chase after the boy. An alcoholic priest named Moreau (Idris Elba-you might remember him as Hiemdall from Thor. Also the Losers, the Office) shows up to rescue the child but his mother Nadya (Vilante Placido-the American, Moana, Sleepless) manages to escape with her son. Turns out she used to date the head of the mercenaries. Moreau finds Johhny Blaze and convinces him if he helps the kid then the curse of Ghost Rider can be lifted (speaking of plot holes, being Ghost Rider is the curse and power the devil gave Blaze. How is it he can then operate to stop the devil?). Thus the chase that dominated the remainder of the movie trundles its way through the next two hours. The mercenary gets transformed by the Devil in Blackout, a pretty cool villain from the comic. Flaming skeleton hijinks ensues. Lots of stuff gets blown up, along with lots of guys.
The stars. Comic book movie that managed to stay closer to the actual story than the last crappy Ghost Rider movie. One star. A couple action sequences and a couple of camera shots were impressive. One star. The transformation sequences were seriously goofy, but once he transformed the CGI for Ghost Rider was pretty cool. One star. Ghost Rider had chains this time, not a shotgun. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes. Multiple gaping plot holes each big enough to park a small fleet of Winnebagos in. Three black holes. Deadpan, deadish acting from Nicholas Cage and pretty much everyone else. Two black holes. Pacing was really off. It jumped right into action with no transition and then made us sit through long sequences of nothing to get to the next one. One black hole. Multiple scenes that added nothing to the film and really should have been carted off with the rest of the deadwood. One black hole. Did I mention that the directors felt the best way to highlight Nicholas Cage’s acting ability would be to have him also deliver some really dopey monologs (you know, the lazy directors way of avoiding figuring out how to explain things to the audience) accompanied by some cartoons that looked like they had been created by some high school kid using MS Paint? One black hole. The entire movie was supposed to be set in Eastern Europe but everything looked and sounded suspiciously like West Texas. One star. Dialog from Hell (haw!). One black hole. Making me pay $11 for a action video I should have been able to see for free on YouTube (glad I didn’t spring for 3D). One black hole. Overall kind of a waste of time. One black hole. Total: twelve black holes.
A grand total of eight black holes. It’s been a while since I really blasted a movie like this. Honestly, the feeling I got from this movie is the two directors really couldn’t care less about Ghost Rider and just used this as a vehicle to make an action video they should have done for about $1,000. Worth seeing at all? Maybe if you are a huge GR fan and/or are easily amused by explosions and moving skeletons. If you are that type of person you had best see it on a big screen. If not, just NetFlix it in two months and have a shot of Jamison every time you spot a plot hole. Within 20 minutes you will be wasted enough to not even care about them and should be able to enjoy the film.
Thanks for reading. Lost of movies to see this weekend, but I will be spending a lot of time at a gaming convention playing Warhammer. Wish me luck. If I do well in the tournament and get a chance I will try to see This Means War and The Secret Life of Arietty. If I do poorly I will punish myself by seeing Mysterious Island. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. If you don’t like tweeting and or making comments here feel free to email me with questions or suggestions [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
