Ghost Rider (2007), Mark Steven Johnson

The basic plot of Ghost Rider centers on trick motorcycle riding Carney Johnny Blaze (Matt Long/Nicholas Cage). Childhood sweetheart Roxanne Simpson (Raquel Alessi/Eva Mendes) is beautiful, smart and loyal. In order to avoid making any kind of commitment to her and get free motorbike upgrades Johnny agrees to work as the devils lackey and signs up to nightly transformation into a blazing skeleton, becoming the patron saint of unreliable gits everywhere. My yet to be heartbroken 13 yr old niece described it as “a love story”.

The film wasn’t as bad as I expected. While the plot isn’t exactly unpredictable and doesn’t make a huge amount of sense even within its own terms, it is at least fast paced. Director Mark Steven Johnson, who also had a hand in two of the worst comic book adaptations of the current decade (Daredevil and Electra) partly redeems himself by finally giving his actors the freedom to not take themselves too seriously. It’s comic book spoof with the spoof not handled entirely easily – nice light touches in some places (the rescued Goth chick), heavy-handed cack in others (you can play cliché bingo with a lot of the script).

Who looks forward to a new Nick Cage movie these days? Here he does what he can as best as he can, playing Johnny Blaze like Evel Knievel possessed by Vegas Elvis. Peter Fonda has some fun as the devil; the grave voiced Sam Elliot is a bit wasted as voice-over man and the not-that-mysterious Caretaker.

Comments

[Terry]

The tiny, tiny bits of this I've seen looked quite fun.

I was at some software conference in July, and spent the night in a 'posh for Manchester' hotel, with various movie channels in the room. They were showing this one on one of them, and I could watch about a minute of it before the screen went blank to be replaced with an ad about how I can watch the rest for £10 or something. I balked at that, but realised that if I turned the channel over, and then back again, I'd get another 20 seconds or so, mute, before the ad re-appeared.

I'm embarrassed to say I kept this up for about 20 minutes, more than long enough for me to get my fill of this.

[Josie]

So you've already seen 40 minutes, and as I said the script doesn't add a huge amount. Your version may may well have been the superior one Terry. The bits where he wraps the chain around himself are pretty good, slightly comedy/fetish. You probably caught at least one of those. Well done for passing the time and saving yourself a tenner.