Rated
PG-13 (Intense Sequences of Action and Violence, Some Disturbing Images, and Language)
Running
Time: 1 Hour & 35 Minutes
Cast-
Nicolas
Cage-Johnny Blaze\Ghost Rider
Idris
Elba-Moreau
Violante
Placido-Nadya
Johnny
Whitworth-Ray Carrigan\Blackout
Ciarán
Hinds-Mr. Roarke\The Devil
Fergus
Riordan-Danny
Christopher
Lambert-Methodius
Directed
by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor
 |
| If only the rest of the film was as awesome as this shot... |
*Sigh*…Nicholas
Cage, what happened to you? Let me
remind you that Cage won a Golden Globe and
an Academy Award for Best Actor back in 1995 for “Leaving Las Vegas,” where he
portrayed a failed Hollywood screenwriter who drank himself to death. He would
receive praise again for his off-kilter performance as Charlie and Donald
Kaufman in 2002’s “Adaptation” but since then, Cage has become something of a
laughing stock as he’s forced to accept every
film offered to him in order to drag himself out of the financial hole he
created. The last film he starred in that received positive reviews was 2010’s
gleefully violent “Kick-Ass” but his recent body of work has been
embarrassingly bad. Last year’s critically-reviled “Trespass” directed by Joel
Schumacher (who ruined the “Batman” franchise back in 1997) was pulled from
theaters in less than two weeks and released on DVD/Blu-Ray after eighteen
days. Cage hasn’t quite reached direct-to-video levels yet but he is coming dangerously close. A self-professed
comic book fan, Cage has longed for his own superhero film franchise and he got
his wish in 2007 with Mark Steven Johnson’s “Ghost Rider.” Unfortunately, it
received negative reviews from both critics and fans alike but managed to
become a mild box office success with $229 million worldwide. Sony/Columbia
Pictures quickly announced a sequel and five years later, we have “Ghost Rider:
Spirit of Vengeance,” which astonishingly manages to make the first film look
like a cinematic masterpiece by comparison thanks to its nonsensical story,
atrocious dialogue, haphazard camerawork and bargain-basement special effects. This
film is nothing but a trashy snooze-fest that will leave you angry with a
throbbing headache.
Picking up eight years after the events of the first film,
former motorcycle stuntman Johnny Blaze (Nicholas Cage) is in self-imposed
exile in a remote part of Eastern Europe as he continues to struggle with the
curse of the Ghost Rider. A hard-drinking monk named Moreau (Idris Elba) finds
him and asks for his help in locating a boy named Danny (Fergus Riordan), who
is being hunted by a band of gun-toting mercenaries led by Ray Carrigan (Johnny
Whitworth). If Blaze succeeds, Moreau will help lift his curse and give him
back his soul. Convinced by the prospect of having a second chance at a normal
life, Blaze unleashes the Ghost Rider and manages to track down the boy but the
situation becomes complicated when he learns that Danny is to be the new vessel
for Mr. Roarke aka the Devil himself (Ciarán Hinds). To stop the Devil from
fully regaining his powers, Blaze teams up with Moreau and Danny’s mother Nadya
(Violante Placido) but hot on their trail is Carrigan, who has been transformed
into the demonic Blackout.
Hollywood tends to release numerous sequels to films
that earn even a modicum of profit
but I doubt anyone was clamoring for
a follow-up to “Ghost Rider,” widely considered to be one of the worst comic
book films ever made. I admit that it is still
miles better than Schumacher’s horrid travesty “Batman & Robin,” which is
already high praise indeed. Mark Steven Johnson steps aside to serve as
executive producer and replacing him are Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who
have carved out a niche specializing in violently over-the-top action films
such as “Crank” and “Gamer” where they disregard everything that makes up a
good film such as story and character development in favor of satisfying their
inner-thirteen-year-old. “Spirit of Vengeance” is no different but the violence
has been toned down in order to receive a PG-13 rating. For a film that was
marketed as having non-stop action, there’s surprisingly very little with the
‘story’ solely used to inflate the already-short ninety-five minute running
time. Nothing generates much interest as the script from Scott M. Gimple, Seth
Hoffman, and David S. Goyer (who also co-wrote “The Dark Knight” with
Christopher Nolan) is a straight rip-off from James Cameron’s “Terminator 2:
Judgment Day.” The rushed pacing makes it clear that the film was made solely
for Sony/Columbia Pictures to keep the rights to the character when it would’ve
been wiser to let them revert back to Marvel. Honestly, I was bored by what was
happening on-screen because nothing
is taken seriously and you simply do not care about anyone. Even the exposition
is conveyed in lazily-animated sequences.
One of the problems that plagued the
first film was the yawn-inducing action but here, it’s liable to give you a
pounding headache as the camera erratically shakes around in extremely odd
angles and close-ups to the point where you cannot even tell what the heck is
going on. Neveldine and Taylor’s interpretation of Ghost Rider as an
unstoppable primal force of nature is one of the few bright spots and the CG
work to bring him to life is impressive but everything else is just
bargain-basement quality with cheap-looking sets that appear to have been
hastily assembled with Styrofoam. “Spirit of Vengeance” is another one of those
films that was post-converted into 3D and while it does not suffer from the
same issues that plagued other post-converted films, the effect adds nothing except a $5 surcharge. There’s
no sense of depth at all and the confusing action scenes only add to the
disorienting experience.
Like the story, the acting is god-awful with Nicholas
Cage in full-on psycho mode. I admire the fact that he throws himself into the
role with such wild abandon but it’s all
wrong. Johnny Blaze is supposed to be tormented by his struggle to contain the
Ghost Rider but he comes off as a wide-eyed schizophrenic. Idris Elba sports a
ridiculous French accent while Violante Placido really tries to give her character some measure of depth but it’s
all for naught given that she’s intended to be nothing more than eye-candy. The
worst offense is Johnny Whitworth as Ray Carrigan/Blackout with his annoying
‘dirt-bag’ shtick that quickly wears thin. For those of you who don’t know,
Blackout is a villain of Ghost Rider
who debuted in Ghost Rider #2 in 1990
but his powers are poorly realized as every time he comes into contact with
someone, he transports them to this void-like dimension, which I assume was
done to save money. Ciarán Hinds is the only cast member to come out relatively
unscathed and actually makes for an effective Satan.
“Ghost Rider: Spirit of
Vengeance” was released on February 17, 2012 to highly negative reviews with an
unsurprisingly low 16% on Rotten
Tomatoes. Critics wrote off the film ‘as plain trash’ with its ‘weak script,
uneven CG work, and a Nicholas Cage performance so predictably loony it’s no
longer amusing.’ While it was initially expected to win the President’s Day
weekend, this is no longer the case as clichéd romantic drama “The Vow” looks
to be holding on to first place. “Spirit of Vengeance” is looking to finish the
four-day weekend in fourth place with approximately $24 million, a far cry from
its predecessor. It will likely recoup its $57 million production budget once
worldwide receipts are factored in but hopefully a third film won’t follow. Audience attendance was
middling at best when I saw the film but a majority seemed to enjoy it,
especially one obnoxious patron who kept screaming excitedly at every action scene
and even during the previews to the point where you’d think that this was his first time seeing a 3D film. As
pretentious as this may sound, films should be watched by those who can
appreciate it while yokels like the one I mentioned should stay home where they
belong. “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” is a horrible film even by B-movie standards
and is a waste of everyone’s time and money. You may be broke but I know you
can do better than this, Nicholas Cage!
Final
Rating: 1 out of 5
“This
thing...there's no conscience…just hunger. The Rider's gonna come out. And when
he does, he'll destroy whoever's got it coming.”
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