Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
Released: February 17th (UK)
The Good: Well, this shouldnt take long. Nicholas Cage channels a psychotic and wildfire anti-hero perfectly here, ramping up the insanity of his original Ghost Rider interpretation by 100%. As hard as it is to take the character seriously as a result of this, we can at least give Cage credit for living up to the name of Spirit Of Vengeance.
The Bad: Where to start? There was absolutely no need for the Ghost Riderfilm franchise to get a reboot after what many considered to be a mediocre opening instalment. I quite enjoyed the first film, so to see a new origins story rushed out in the opening moments so haphazardly was just disheartening to say the least. The narrative gets no better after that either, switching lazily between gothic action and horror to misjudged and overblown comedy- the inverted commas are placed on that last word as absolutely no-one in the audience laughed at any stage of the film; presumably everyone was too astonished at their own decision to remain within the cinema rather than asking for their money back. Every actor bar Nick Cage gets either marginal screen time (Idris Elba being a prime example of this) or terrible dialogue to contend with throughout the piece. This leads to huge tonal inconsistencies as Spirit Of Vengeance flies from one direction to another at regular intervals, while allowing viewers a total sense of apathy from the dislikeable bunch of cardboard cut-outs theyre presented with here. One of the best moments has to be the Riders using his chain weapon to hurl his arch-foe into the ground as a finishing move. Why, then, did the marketing team choose to include this in all of the advertisement material right from the first trailer? Probably because they had started to guess that this was the only selling moment of the entire film.
The Verdict: Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance starts poorly and just constantly continues to steep downhill in quality as it progresses through the tiresome 105 minute running time. This is a superhero film that literally embodies why some people still cannot take the genre seriously, the gritty parallel to what Batman & Robin did for the Dark Knight series. Yes, it really is
that bad. Avoid at all costs.
1 Star