Movie Review - Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance

Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance

(2011)

Columbia Pictures / Hyde Park Entertainment / Marvel Entertainment /Avi Arad Productions / Marvel Knights : Warner Bros / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

5.25 / 10

This is the apotheosis of a hit and miss movie.  There are as many things wrong with it as there are right.

The most disturbing factor in the movie is Nicholas Cage's acting.  He doesn't even appear to be playing himself (as is the case with most of his movies).  For the entire movie, you get the feeling he would rather be elsewhere as his performance appears lackadaisical.  There's no conveyance of any character and no chemistry between Cage / Johnny Blaze and any of the others involved.

Then there are the soul-taking sequences.  These are way too long.  By the time the Ghost Rider starts to pull out a soul and actually remove it from its body completely, the bad guys have enough time to, get in their vehicles and drive to the nearest army base... overthrow the soldiers... hack into the weapons room... decrypt the nuclear missile codes... and launch them at The Rider... as I said, way too long.  These scenes verge on the ridiculous and I nearly turned off at this point.

Which would have been a shame because I would've missed some of the good things about this movie.  The concept of whatever The Rider rides becomes his hell on wheels is inspired as this allows for the transformation of a van and a drilling machine.  These are pretty awesome scenes.  The last chase scene is pretty decent and packed with action.

It was also pretty nice to see Christopher Lambert as the mad monk Methodius.

Apart from Nicholas Cage, the rest of the cast were okay.  Not outstanding by any means.  Though the strongest actor was Idris Elba as Moreau, and even he wasn't at his best.  This could have been down to the direction of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who did a great job of all the action sequences but weren't too hot when handling the acting and there are too many sequences that feel "thrown in".

If you enjoyed the first Ghost Rider movie or enjoy the Comic Books then you may enjoy this but I would not recommend it to anybody who wasn't a fan of The Ghost Rider.