Rating of
2/4
"Ghost Rider" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 04/05/12
Nicolas Cage stars as Johnny Blaze, a stunt rider who sold his soul to save his father's life and in payment must act as the devil's bounty hunter. Ghost Rider is your typical Hollywood blockbuster, It has some really impressive effects and spectacular set pieces, but it also has a simplistic plot, trite dialogue and two dimensional characters; in fact if I didn't know better I'd have assumed that Mark Stephen Johnson was a 16 year old wrestling fan who'd seen one too many Michael Bay movies. In a lot of ways it's as schizophrenic as the Ghost Rider himself; all the scenes of Cage being Cage are awful, but when he changes it actually becomes pretty good; the section when he's being chased by the police is actually damn good. But the biggest let down is in the villains; they just stand around pouting like an emo band spouting tired old cliches and the showdowns with Ghost Rider are all terrible anti-climaxes. All in all it definitely has it's moments, but Christopher Nolan's Batman films have raised the bar sky high for the superhero film, and Ghost Rider just doesn't measure up.
