Review: Ghost Rider

Review: Ghost Rider (Mark Steven Johnson, 2007, USA).

Nicholas Cage is an enigma. A man who seems drawn to a wide ramge of projects, a man you can never pin down. After the clusterfuck that was Neil LaBute's appaling remake of The Wicker Man, Cage is back with what seems like a far safer bet, a comic book movie.
Cage is Johnny Blaze a motorcycle stuntman who as a teen is offered the chance to have his father brought back from the brink of death by Mephisto (Peter Fonda). In exchange for this, Cage must act as Mephisto's Ghost Rider, essentially his own personal bounty hunter. He is called upon when Mephisto's son wants to take over the world by stealing a contract. Or something. And so, Blaze must contend with being the Rider, saving the world, and getting the girl, childhood sweetheart Roxanne.
File this under what the great Mark Kermode calls "the death of narrative cinema". This film makes barely any sense and is incoherent at times. I did not really get what the thrust of the plot was and I think this is down to the filmmakers more than myself! When a good hour of the less than 2 hour running time is pretty much dedicated to setting up the Ghost Rider legend, the rest of the plot is bound to suffer. Look at the first X-Men film. Magneto's plan was clear but not important at all, most time was spent setting up the X-Men. Fair enough, there are a lot of them and a lot of back story. But the Ghost Rider story is very simple. Dude sells soul to devil, dude gets fucked over, dude has flaming head. Done. It should not take an hour to set up. I can see this being for budgetary reasons also. More time setting up Ghost Rider, less they have to spend to bring the effect to life. Thinking about it, it is probably the cheapest looking $120 million budget blockbuster I have ever seen. The Rider himself looks incredible, and the scenes of him tearing up the town bnoth vertically and horizontally are enough to watch the film for alone. And yet, the rest of the film looks rushed, cheap and just not good enough. Its all very second-tier stuff, much like Daredevil, Mark Steven Johnson's previous effort.
The enemies are also poor, Mephisto burns with an undercurrent of intensity but he is there for exposition and to set up a sequel (in a very very obvious twist, which is ruined if you have seen any of the TV ads in the UK, if you think about it for one second). Blackheart (Wes Bentley) is a sad goth teen who can suck out peopes lives and his gang are so very bland. The romance is not even worth talking about, just there to tick the boxes.
Nicholas Cage. The film's saving grace. You can tell he wants it to be a success and he is the only reason to recommend it. He is funny yet understated and he plays the tortured soul oh so very well. And yet the 12 year olds who this is aimed at won't be able to wait for him to transform into Ghost Rider for some more bland action sequences which show off nothing but how comic book movies can go oh so wrong if too mich money and not enough ideas are thrown at them. Sorry for the uninspired review but it just doesn't make me want to say anything else.
Unlike, I suspect, my next review due tomorrow or Saturday. One of the greatest living director's is back with what is supposed to be his most left-field entry yet. Oh yes, David Lynch's Inland Empire. I for one, cannot fucking wait.