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| Ghost Rider |
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Plot:This is the story of motorcycle stunt performer, Johnny Blaze (Cage), who agrees to become the host of a "spirit of vengeance" in exchange for the safety of his true love, but the price he pays is to be cursed with the avenging spirit that takes its form at night as a demon with a flaming skull on a motorcycle of hellfire.
Cast: Nicholas Cage, Jon Voight, Wes Bentley, Eva Mendes, Matt Long, Daniel Frederiksen, Laurence Breuls, Matthew Wilkinson, Donal Logue, Peter Fonda, Sam Elliot.
My Thoughts isappointing
Review:I can't really say exactly where "Ghost Rider" went wrong, but I can say it went wrong just about everywhere. The film tells the story of Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage), a stunt performer who performs motorcycle stunts for a living. Of course, he learned this trade from his father, who also did the same thing when Johnny was a kid, and Johnny in fact performed with his father. Johnny as a teen, learns that his dad has cancer, an opportunity which the devil, known in this film as Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda) uses to get Johnny to sell him his soul. In exchange, he will make Johnny's dad well again. Johnny agrees, and Mephistopheles keeps his end of the bargain...however it isn't long before he breaks that deal by taking out Johnny's dad at his next race. After losing his dad, Johnny renegs on a deal of his own, which was to run away with his one true love Roxanne. Fast forward many years later, Johnny is now all grown up, and still working the scene as a stunt performer. Things are going pretty good for Johnny, and he even reunites with his true love Roxanne (Eva Mendes) who's also now all grown up and has a job as a news reporter. But as his life takes a turn for the better, it also takes a turn for the worse...as Mephistopheles returns to collect on the deal Johnny made when he was a kid. Now, Johnny is burdened with the curse of being Mephisto's "rider", a vengeance demon with a flaming skull for a head and who rides a flaming motorcycle while weilding a chain of fire, and who punishes evil people for their sins. The visual fx in this movie are about the only stunning thing about it. When Cage becomes the rider, it's about as positive as this film gets due to the scenes looking very real and very cool. But besides that, this picture has nothing going for it. For one, Cage as the ghost rider doesn't give a very charismatic performance, and quite frankly his acting is so dead that you kind of wish he'd "rider out" and stay that way for the entire movie. The ghost rider himself is much more fun to watch than Cage is. Eva Mendes as Roxanne tries her best with what's given to her but her role doesn't have much meat to it, and she fills in the usual blanks. The good looking girl who the main male character is trying to get a second chance with but who also doesn't make it that easy for him to do so. Along the way as expected, she's snatched up by the main bad guy and Johnny Blaze aka the ghost rider has to come rescue her near the end. Another problem is that Mendes and Cage don't seem to have any on-screen chemistry worth anything. When both are on screen together during those "moments"...they just don't seem to click at all. When watching such a trainwreck on screen, you atleast hold out some kind of hope that the villains can hold up their end of the film. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen here in this movie. Mephisto specifically calls on the rider to find a scroll which holds a ton of damned souls, a scroll which Mephisto was cheated out of by a previous rider many years before. The rider's mission is to seek out, find, and then return this scroll to Mephisto's posession, but also to keep it away from Blackheart (Wes Bentley) who wants the scroll for his own reasons. The problem with Bentley's character is he's really not much of a bad guy. He can suck the life from a person with one touch, and can change his voice from human to demon, but other than that....and being extremely pale, even for a gothesque villain, he's not exactly an awesome bad guy at all. He's aided in his quest for the scroll by two minions, Wallow and some other guy. The minions actually have cooler powers than their boss. Huh?? How can that be you ask? Leave it to Mark Steven Johnson who wrote the script to screw up the pecking order of boss and helper. One of Blackheart's minions can control the element of wind, while the other can control the element of earth, certainly both have powers which are far superior to Blackheart's, yet for some reason they take orders from him anyway..go figure. Furthermore...Blackheart is Mephisto's son, and the two have a moment where they verbally dress each other down staking their claim to the scroll but it's never explained why exactly dad and son are at each others throats. Power? Okay, but Johnson really doesn't expand on any backstory between these two. Therefore, the viewer is forced to go with the age old "there's no honor amongst thieves" explanation for the father & son squabble. Blackheart and Ghost Rider only have a few brief confrontations which really don't amount to anything big, and just when you think the writer possibly saved the biggest, baddest, and best fight for the films finale, you're forced to think again, as after Johnny as the Ghost Rider makes short work of Blackheart's two minions, the final fight between the two amounts to alot of visual fx combat....but barely any physical fighting. "Ghost Rider" is quite the letdown if you're looking for action, suspense, and any real entertainment value. The sad part is it will probably get a sequel, which if the same writer is brought back to pen that script, is guaranteed to be equally boring.
Positives:The ghost rider looked great, and the scenes where he rides through the city blazing a trail of fire are the highlights of the film.
Negatives:Bad dialogue, subpar story, no chemistry between Cage and Mendes, lame villains, and just an overall lack of entertainment value.
Overall:Wait for dvd if you aren't a huge fan of the comic.
Review by Mr. HoRrOr at Horror Movies &stuff http://www.hms.notlong.co
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