TITLE: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
STARRING: Nicolas Cage, Fergus Riordan, Ciarán Hinds, Violante Placido, Idris Elba, Christopher Lambert, Johnny Whitworth
DIRECTOR: Neveldine/Taylor
STUDIO: Hyde Park Entertainment, Imagenation Abu Dhabi, Marvel Knights, Crystal Sky Pictures, Columbia Pictures
RATED: PG-13
RUN TIME: 95  min
RELEASED: February 17, 2012

By Eric Stuckart
Creator, Destroyer

As full disclosure, I hadn’t actually earned the achievement of watching the first Ghost Rider film in its entirety until earlier this week. That’s mainly due to the fact that — despite my willingness to watch even the more obscure comic-inspired films — I could not get past the first twenty minutes of the film any time I actually tried to watch it. Personally speaking, it’s one of those movies that’s so bad that the only genuine reaction I can have is to laugh at it. The unfortunate part about that is the fact that I’m not laughing with it.

Lucky for lovers of trashy cinema such as myself, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance makes some strides to fix many of the issues that people such as my self had with the original. I won’t say that they’re great strides, but things were done to alleviate some of the pain that viewers felt while watching the atrocious first installment.

It seems that the powers that be in Hollywood were willing to let Ghost Rider have a second go-round much akin to the Punisher’s “not quite a sequel, but not a reboot” War Zone film. For all intents and purposes, in Spirit of Vengeance’s universe, the first film was more or less an idea rather than a concrete history. This is clarified rather early on in the film, where the best, most bits interesting bits from the 2007 film were cherry picked and sprinkled into this film, leaving pretty much everything, including the half-serious tone, behind.

Nicolas Cage returns as Johnny Blaze, a tortured man who made a deal with the devil to try and save his father’s life, in exchange for him becoming the devil’s bounty hunter. While in hiding in “Eastern Europe,” as the film eloquently states, he’s approached by Moreau, a rebellious French monk (Idris Elba) who knows who and what he is, and wants him to find a boy whose connection to the Devil goes further than the typical nefarious deals he’s known for. This problem is doubled when the Rider and Moreau find themselves fighting against the Devil’s new henchman, Blackout, and racing the clock to save the kid. The plot is pretty thin but has just enough meat on it to work, and given Cage’s predisposition to manically ravage the scenery at every turn, it gives viewers what they wanted last time around: a film that has Cage channeling pure id while everything just chaotically explodes around him.

It’s evident by the film’s end that everyone knew that they were in what has the makings of being a B movie, but I’m unsure of its cult classic viability just yet. Unfortunately, while the film is quite self-aware and plays for as many “did that just happen?” moments, it isn’t quite as fun as last year’s Drive Angry, another Cage… ahem…vehicle that featured him dealing with the devil in a different way. But, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor — the guys behind the stupid but fun Crank movies — know how to direct fast and frenetic, and it suits the action.

As for how it holds up compared to the first one, I was pleased. The visuals look much more believable in the sense that when Cage is the Rider he no longer looks and sounds like a last-generation video game character cheaply pasted into the film. The CGI isn’t even close to top notch, and it still looks like CGI, but it works for Neveldine/Taylor’s approach to action. One of the biggest issues I had with the first one — besides it just being laughably bad — was how every time the Rider was onscreen, it looked so fake that I couldn’t manage to barely suspend my disbelief. Spirit of Vengeance, even with all of its quick cut excess and odd visual flares whenever villain Blackout is onscreen, handled this somewhat better. However, it’s the over-the-top, anything goes tone that this film has that also helps push things along. It’s easier to digest some of the more ridiculous scenes when the film knows what it is and is having fun with it.

Make no mistakes, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is by no means a good film by any standards — even normal ones — but at this point, shouldn’t you know that already? When it comes to Nicolas Cage films, it’s like peering into a strange parallel universe, where what he does onscreen is normal, and for the duration of the film, we’re in his world. Like rubberneckers at an accident, we’re just there to see the spectacle. As someone had said as I was walking out of the theater as the credits started to roll, “What did I just watch? My mind has just been raped!”

I couldn’t sum it up any better.

RATING: 5/10

Front page image and interior stills from kinopoisk.ru via collider.com.