Ghost Rider

Very rarely do movies like this one come along, a movie that is terrific and terrible and sometimes both at the exact same time. Through the entire movie I found myself on the edge of my seat and then the next moment cringing in pain. I laughed when I was supposed to laugh but laughed just as hard when I wasn’t supposed to. I dropped my jaw at half of the special effects and shook my head in disbelief at the other half. It was just a giant, loud, bright study in just how over the top comic book movies can be without the right touch from a director. I take nothing away from the vision of the director here because it is obvious he likes comic books. He just isn’t quite sure what he is doing half of the time.


Ghost rider is the story of a young man who sells his soul to the devil to make his father well. The Marvel comic was based upon early comics of a western bounty hunter for the devil and is not a comic that I know all that well. I always felt Ghost Rider was a comic best glanced through, not read. The story never appealed to me, but the art was always brilliant. Now here in the film version, Nic Cage plays the perfectly named Johnny Blaze. Cage is an avid comic book fan and this was a bit of a pet project for him and it shows. Cage bleeds his heart and overacting soul into the tortured flame head and often times he gets it right. Some will complain that the comic character never had any hesitation and Cage does throw a certain amount of hesitation into the role, but he really catches the spectacular over the top attitude of the film. Eva Mendes is along for the ride, although she doesn’t have much to do. She looks hot, but not quite hot enough for my taste, for a comic book movie. Sam Elliott pops up as the caretaker, giving us the required exposition and has the coolest effect sequence in the film, if you ask me.


I don’t believe anyone is going to see this movie in hopes of brilliant dialogue or story, because the trailer is all about the flash and there is plenty of flash to go around. There CGI effects go from brilliant to horrible, but I seemed to be the only one who noticed because there was a thunderous applause when the movie ended. The first transition from human to Ghost Rider is dizzyingly painful to watch, but perfect because you can feel how much it would suck to have your skin replaced by blazing fire. The blazing chain is phenomenal looking, but the skull itself is pretty corny looking and the voice is even worse. There is a certain level of cool mythology within the story but you have to really pay attention to catch it because the dialogue can be a bit tired and boring. So in the end, I still can’t figure out if I enjoyed the movie or not. It was a spectacle and unabashedly campy, but it only works half the time. However, in that half it is such a crazy fun ride!