Review of Ghost Rider (2007) by Ramey G — 12 Jun 2012

* out of ****.

Johnny Blaze (played by Matt Long as a teenager and Nicholas Cage as an adult) was but a young man when he made a dirty deal with the devil, Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda, clueless and joyless). A son to a father sick with cancer brought on from smoking too many cigarettes, he worked in the carnival business as an apprentice to his dad. Both were motorcycle stuntmen; and both were damn good at what they did too. Johnny's talents had landed him a girlfriend named Roxanne (played by Raquel Alessi as a teen and Eva Mendes as an adult), with whom he had planned to run away with the day that the devil dropped in for a visit. The timely arrival put everything in Johnny's life on hold. The deal was that his father's illness would be cured, but not without a price; Johnny's soul would now belong to the devil. And what does this mean exactly? Well, apparently it means something along the lines of: Johnny is now the new "Ghost Rider", which means that he's the alleged "bounty hunter of the damned". As the Ghost Rider, his head goes ablaze and he dons a sweet new bike and a giant-ass chain-whip. He's like some kind of superhero, which would make sense, since the story is derived from a Marvel comic book and its respective title character.

Most of the plot consists of the following: Johnny meeting up with his sweetheart Roxanne for the first time in years, fighting crime with his fire superpowers, and evading Blackheart (Wes Bentley), the son of Mephistopheles, as well as the three fallen angels that he has brought to earth with him. He offs each member of the trio one-by-one, all while attempting to maintain two lives at once. In one of the, he is Johnny Blaze the famous stuntman; and in the other, he is the Ghost Rider. A man known as the caretaker (Sam Elliot) happens upon Johnny at one point in the film and helps him to understand the true nature of the latter. He knows all about the history of the Ghost Rider...probably because he was once the Ghost Rider himself. But once a Ghost Rider, always a Ghost Rider; as the saying doesn't go, because there never was and never will be a saying related to this film or the comics that inspired it.

2007 was a pretty great year for movies, although for every 20-something modern masterpieces, there must be the epic stinkers. "Ghost Rider" is one of them. It's a loud, distracting, stupid waste of celluloid. It has a lot of the ingredients of a modernized homage to exploitation cinema - firepower, a superhero background that could be used as a fetishistic element, big bikes, and babe such as Mendes - yet does not want to be that kind of movie. It takes itself too seriously for a film of its level of mind-numbing ignorance, and therein lies the reason for its failure. I have never read the Ghost Rider comics, but I can imagine that they are interesting and creative; unlike this unforgivable mess. This adaptation doesn't even have the common courtesy of solid-looking sets or pretty special effects. In fact, for a 2007 film, this one looks pretty damn lame. Whenever Johnny's mug lights up, I wanted to scream with laughter. It was hard preventing myself from doing so, but I managed.

The casting director for this film should never be allowed to lend their helping hand in another production again. This is one of the most grossly mis-cast movies I've come across in a long, long time. Virtually every actor involved seems eager to get their paycheck; and therefore the performances are mostly impassionate and forgettable. And then there are some that just plain suck. I'm sorry, but awesome as Fonda is, he doesn't play the villain role very convincingly here. To play the devil, you must come across as both discreetly cunning and evil at the same time; while Fonda is simply neither. It would be worth mentioning all the other bad actors if "Ghost Rider" had supplied me with enough to talk about, but alas, I don't feel like talking about any of those people. The only actor who offered his services was Donal Logue, who somehow comes off as charming in every scene he's in. It's a shame then that he has to be surrounded by all this awful dialogue and all these bland performances. I'll just call him the most inspired element of the film and leave it at that.

The premise could have made for a deep character study, or perhaps just a cool and action-packed superhero movie; but the fact of the matter is that director Mark Steven Johnson ("Daredevil") doesn't understand the material at all and therefore doesn't know what to do with the themes and plot elements that he is given. I have faith that there can be a good adaptation of the Marvel comic if the story is put in the right hands of a superb craftsman, but until then, I guess we'll just have to sit through more CGI-filled crapfests. And the saddest thing about that is that the CGI isn't even that good. If you ask me, that should be a given for any good comic book movie. But you know what they say about those. They leap right from behind the screen and the surface of each page and immerse you in their world. Of "Ghost Rider", I can say one thing is for certain; it doesn't even make it to the page.