Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)

Directed by: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Written by: Scott Gimple, Seth Hoffman, David S. Goyer
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Fergus Riordan, Ciaran Hinds, Violante Placido, Idris Elba, Christopher Lambert, Johnny Whitworth

That damned Satan is at it again.

One of the many bad "its" he's up to is premarital sex; Satan (Ciaran Hinds) manages to enchant, date and somehow seduce the mortal Nadya (Violante Placido). Or, maybe he violently rapes her. I'm not really sure. All I know is that they had sex. The expositional dialogue of this film is of the variety that lends one to stare into space, thinking of something other than the film, and I admit I missed exactly how it is they slept together. But, the main point is this: Some nine months later, Nadya gives birth to Satan's child on earth.

Somehow, Nadya has managed to raise the child to about 10 years, all without the help (or child support payments, presumably) of that nasty Satan. Dad has a dark ritual to attend to, however, and so wants his son back. The devil — for some not entirely explained reason — is a little weak in mortal form on earth, and so he sends a number of nasty bad thugs to go collect the child instead of doing it himself.

Johnny Blaze (Nicholas Cage) gets pulled into this mix through bumbling serendipity and ends up in the role of the child's protector. Ghost Rider is the "good" terminator looking to fight off the "evil" terminators that the devil sends after them. Predictably, he ends up forming a weakly shown bond with the young boy and becomes emotionally invested in the safety of the child as well as his mom.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is, as one might imagine, a big silly pile of crap; however, it is one of those big silly piles of crap that has some value in just being ridiculous. Much of this comes from the frenzied wonder that is Nicholas Cage, who certainly does have some Bad Lieutenant moments of hysterical craziness, but it is also just due to the subject matter itself. The flaming skull of its titular character was never a very subtle thing.

It does seem like this installment is a little less filled with corny punchlines than the first film; the original actually had "bonehead" jokes sewn throughout it. But that doesn't mean Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance takes things entirely seriously, and this is a good thing. Bad guy Ray Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth) delivers the best gag of the film when Satan turns him into an undead monster with the unholy power to rapidly decay anything he touches. Even an undead monster gets hungry, and so Ray sticks his hand into an abandoned brown bag lunch he finds to get something to eat. The sandwich he pulls out immediately rots in his hand and becomes inedible; he throws it to the ground. He pulls an apple out of the bag, and it withers and rots from his evil power and is also wasted. He tries again, and this time pulls out a Hostess Twinkie. It doesn't rot. It stays perfect. He eats the Twinkie and is happy.

Clever moments like this are actually pretty rare for the film, and the great bulk of the plot is abysmal nonsense. I never understood why Satan had such a hard time reeling in a 10-year-old boy. I got the bit about how Satan's powers are supposed to be a little diminished while he's in human form but, for crying out loud, he's still Satan and we're just talking about a 10-year-old. Further than that, let's all recall that Ghost Rider was created by Satan, when the mortal Johnny Blaze made a pact with the Devil to save his father's life. Satan injected him with an evil entity in order to give the man super skull-based powers and to use him to collect the souls of the damned. But why is it that Ghost Rider can now directly battle against his master? Satan made the damned thing, and we're supposed to believe that Ghost Rider can not only directly fight the Devil, but might even win. Why would Satan do that? Is the greatest evil the universe ever imagined such a blithering idiot as to blindly create a power that can not only disobey him, but might even destroy his master plan? The real Satan should sue.

I hadn't really followed this film prior to seeing it, so I was actually a little surprised to see Highlander Christopher Lambert appear. Lambert plays Methodius, a tattooed monk belonging to some secret order that is somehow involved with all of this foolishness. If seeing Lambert was my first surprise, my second was in that Lambert did not have a sword. I thought Christopher Lambert had some sort of contractual deal with someone — maybe Satan — that he had to appear with a sword in every single movie he's in. "Wow!" I thought. "He doesn't have a sword!" About 10 minutes later, things go bad and suddenly Lambert the monk pulls out a sword and starts swinging it around. I guess Lambert's "Sword Contract" remains intact.

There was one line in the film that was particularly lame and deserves special note. At the beginning of the film, Cage delivers some rambling narration explaining the nature of Ghost Rider and makes the claim that he may just kill anyone for any given sin, including those who may make "illegal downloads." The studios obviously seeded the film with this insipid, stupid little line in order to express their financially fueled opinion on this hot button item. It was a weak and annoying little blurb that had no purpose being in the film other than to annoy everyone watching it and to please the greedy money men at the top of the film food chain.

Nicholas Cage is no stranger to dealing with the Devil. Early 2011 saw the release of Drive Angry, in which Cage played Milton, a vengeful spirit who escapes hell to exact revenge upon his mortal foes. In comparison, Drive Angry is a good deal more entertaining. Drive Angry was far more aggressive in being ridiculous and crazed, and this is, at least in part, fueled by its R rating. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance keeps things pretty tame, which is unfortunate considering its subject matter. You'd expect things might get pretty bloody with a flaming skull monster that whips evildoers into pieces with infernal chains, but this is kept bloodless and PG-13 friendly by having the chains burn their victims up in CGI flames.

Really, the biggest flaw of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is that it's too damned tame. A Ghost Rider film should have an edge but the monster played by Nicholas Cage is a blunted force. We're told repeatedly of how unrelenting and merciless Ghost Rider is — but we never really see it. Sure, he kills bad guys, but anyone can do that. He's actually not all that merciless about it. More lines should have been crossed, and they never really are. I'll put it this way: I doubt even Rick Santorum would be offended by this film, and Santorum is a fascist Christian asshole. If a movie featuring a flaming skull-headed motorcycle-riding monster created by Satan can't offend a man touting a Christian version of Sharia Law, then it has serious problems. Maybe if Meatloaf had been in it.

This is a Day Two Review.

Rating: (2.5 out of 5):