I would probably have enjoyed “Ghost Rider” more if I were a 13-year-old pyromaniac who’s really into motorcycles, but walking into the movie with absolutely no expectations, I found them pleasantly exceeded.

Nicolas Cage’s melancholy face spontaneously combusts into a flaming skull in this gas-guzzling, tarmac-shredding adaptation of the Marvel comic. He plays Johnny Blaze, a stunt motorcyclist who makes a Faustian pact in order to save his dying father. Although he does this at the age of 17 – apparently selling your soul to the devil is so easy that all it takes is a paper cut – Mephistopheles (a cane-wielding, scenery-chewing Peter Fonda) takes a couple of decades before he comes back to claim his dues. Turns out even dark lords need some help disciplining their kids. I mean, how can you rule Hell when you can’t rule your own household? Tsk.

So Blaze must transform into a burning bounty hunter to stop the devil’s rebellious son, Blackheart, from usurping his father and ending the world… or something. The plot is just a backdrop for the eye-searing action sequences in which our Ghost Rider causes extensive property damage as he metes out his vigilante justice, roaring across water and racing up the sides of skyscrapers. Eva Mendes and Sam Elliott are along for the ride, as the love interest and the wise mentor, respectively. Wes Bentley plays Blackheart like a petulant teenager dressed in a fashionable trenchcoat and flanked by a power-hungry posse. Why would the devil need a bounty hunter to punish his kid? Why are the villains dispatched so easily? Who cares when the FX are good and everyone looks like they’re having fun?

And fun is to be had. I usually enjoy Nic Cage in more muted films – Matchstick Men and Lord of War come to mind – but he can be interesting in loud, slightly campy vehicles too (see National Treasure). Here, he infuses Blaze with a deadpan humour that works in the midst of all the smoke and flames and explosions, because he embraces the cheesiness. Director Mark Steven Johnson, who brought us such comic book crapfests as Daredevil and Elektra (both of which took themselves too seriously), also penned the script’s many cringe-worthy lines. “He can take my soul,” Blaze intones at one point, “but he can’t take my spirit.” More power to you!

Ghost Rider can be deconstructed as a movie about daddy issues – after all, Blaze is haunted and driven by the memory of his father, and Blackheart is obsessed with escaping the shadow of his – but where’s the motor-revving fun in that?

3*






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