Review of Ghost Rider (2007) by Alex W — 25 Nov 2013

Choc full of wannabe Western-isms and expected cheese, Ghost Rider is a foray into not-a-whole-lot.

Ghost Rider strikes me as the sort of comic that didn't need a whole lot of chopping to translate well to the big screen, unfortunately, director Mark Steven Johnson neglected all that, and went for a full on self-made, effects-drive flop. Don't get me wrong, I know I bitch about "effects-driven" a lot, but sometimes it works fine, it's just that Ghost Rider has absolutely no staying power, there's really nothing to it that would make me recommend it to a friend.

I think another major problem is that it aims for 'quirk" and ends up with "cheese". Too dark and long to be considered a silly, fun, little guilty pleasure, but too self-concious and non-sensical to be realistic. What's supposed to be The Devil's Bounty Hunter, riding the world to bring the guilty to justice, ends up being more of a Mad Max wannabe riding a badass motorbike notching up his cliche-meter and pouring the CG-budget down the drain, while bringing as many motifs up as he can.

Though much of the film was quite weak, watching the demons (trenchcoat wearin' mo-fo's above) getting taken out one by one, somewhat akin to, oh, as for example a comic book, was entertaining enough to hold my attention. And Wes Bentley (P2, Jonah Hex) as Blackheart was, at the very least a "cool" character to bring to the film.

Not exactly a masterpiece, but its very few up points did keep me interested enough to hold out for the sequel, Spirit of Vengeance, which supposedly comes out on the 17th of February 2012, starring another favourite of mine, Cirian Hines.

38%.

-Gimly.