Film Reviews

Ghost Rider

• Rating:
• Director: Mark Stephen Johnson
• Starring: Nicholas Cage
• Details: US / 110 mins (12A).

Stunt motorcyclist Johnny Blaze (Cage) cuts a deal with the devil Mephistopheles (Fonda) to save his father from cancer and in return Johnny must spend his nights as a bounty hunter reaping the souls of the desperate. Years later, Mephistopheles offers Johnny a way out their contract when the devil's son Blackheart (Bentley) arrives to create a greater hell on earth. So can the man who brought you the terrible Daredevil deliver something useful? No, is the short answer. With a shoot that was beset with problems and the release date pushed back further and further, while the special effects team worked feverishly on the CGI, what they ended up with is a third rate superhero who looks like something from an AC/DC cover, or even worse - Meatloaf. At least the said covers are tongue in cheek but Ghost Rider takes itself far too seriously. The script is by far and away the worst of a bad lot. Cage allegedly wrote some of his own dialogue and let's hope that "He has my soul but he doesn't have my spirit" wasn't one of his redrafts. Cage is a good actor, but his career decisions of late have left a lot to be desired and he now he has another one to add to the pile. The script is badly put-together, and looks like every time they wrote themselves into a dead end, they just invented something new but didn't bother to track back and include it earlier on, while Sam Elliot's voiceover smacks of a last attempt of the desperate to have some sort of coherent narrative.

Review by Gavin Burke