Ghost Rider running on empty

Written by Alwyn Davis

Friday, 16 March 2007

Walking into the cinema and finding a seat, I had quite high hopes for this movie. After all, Nicholas Cage tearing around on a chopper that would make Meatloaf proud whilst dispensing flaming vengeance with both fists seemed a pretty foolproof story to me. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

The movie starts by providing roughly an hour of largely superfluous story, the sort that is so cliched it could have easily been dispensed of in half the time. Instead, the director, Mark Steven Johnson (you may remember that he was responsible for Daredevil) chooses to turn Johnny Blaze into a callow youth with a little too much makeup on. He earnestly tries to demonstrate to the audience how much he loves his father (he sells his soul to save him), how much he loves his girl (he’ll do wheelies for her) and finally how ambivalent he is regarding his Faustian pact (he looks grim and rides around in the rain a bit).

When some blazing action is finally unleashed, it simply sizzles out in a collection of anti-climactic fights that leave you wondering what all the fuss is about. If the bad guys are defeated so easily then where was the struggle? And speaking of the bad guys, hissing instead of speaking coherently doesn’t automatically make you evil, just bad at acting.

Given those points, my greatest gripe with the movie is that after all the screen time it received, Eva Mendes’ chest wasn’t listed in the final credits. I think they need a better union.