Written by Kirk Baird
The demon-for-good Ghost Rider is back, as the Devil
plots to assume a new, more powerful form to allow him to wreak havoc on Earth.
Motorcycle daredevil Johnny Blaze and his nighttime fiery alter ego Ghost Rider
are all that can stop him. It’s an easy plot for a film that chugs along at a
high rate of speed — and doing its best not to be slowed down by plot or
character development.
Considering the collective letdown from 2007’s Ghost
Rider, the approach to the 2011 sequel from everyone — new directors Mark
Neveldine and Brian Taylor and star Nicolas Cage — is “let’s not pretend this
is anything but what you expect it to be and just have fun doing it.”
With no air of pretension hanging over this suitable for
drive-in comic-book hero film now out on DVD and Blu-ray, there’s no other way
to take anything that happens in the 90-plus minutes than with than with a
smile, a shrug, and the acknowledgement, “Hey, the special effects are much
better this time.”
Cage, as most everyone knows, owes millions in unpaid
taxes to the IRS, which means you can see him in just about anything these
days. The actor may be selling his soul to Hollywood to square himself with the
government, but at least he’s having fun doing it. And in a purely guilty
pleasure kind of way, so are we with Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.
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