This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 3:56 pm and is filed under Action, G, Horror, Science Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Director: Mark Steven Johnson
Starring: Nicholas Cage, Eva Mendes, Peter Fonda, Sam Elliott, Donal Logue, Wes Bentley
Marvel Comics has been a gold mine of material for the movie biz in the last few years. The trouble is that some of what they are pulling out is gold, and some is…. well, let’s just say its not gold. This one is not gold, but it is a little better than I expected. The CGI is excellent, once the Ghost Rider finally makes an appearance, but this takes about an hour. The story is ok, but is saddled with pretty sad dialogue in spots.
Matt Long plays a young Johnny Blaze, part of a motorcycle trick riding act along with his father. Young Blaze inadvertently makes a deal with Mephistopheles and eventually (and I do mean eventually) he comes to collect, which really complicates the mature Blaze’s (Cage) attempts to patch up a relationship with his teenage love, Roxanne, played by Eva Mendes who is hotter than the flaming rider. At one point, she asks a waiter if she is good-looking, which is the dumbest question since the last person who asked “Hot enough for ya?” Anyway, once Cage finally becomes the rider instead of a famous motorcycle performer, his job is to put Mephistopheles’ rebellious son back into Hell, but he doesn’t want to go and there is nothing peskier than a spoiled Demi-God.
The first hour is an overdeveloped back-story and the second half is an overblown, story-poor action orgy. The movie is too long, and needed the action more evenly distributed, but action fans will probably forgive its slow start and embrace its prolonged action scenes. It doesn’t have the super ability to win over the minds of others, however.
