GHOST RIDER is the first guilty pleasure of 2007. Driven along strictly by the personalities involved, never surrendering to an internal logic that might slow things down to bring them back to earth, it barrels along a dicey path between camp and melodrama and rises above them both while never for a moment demanding to be taken too seriously. First and foremost among those personalities is Nicolas Cage as the title character, aka Johnny Blaze. Based on the Marvel comic of the same name, it gives us a hero with a blazing skull, an incipient apocalypse, and some terrific special effects. Not to mention motorcycle stunts. Lots of them.
Johnny’s a basically decent guy, who long ago was tricked fair and square, more or less, by the smoothly menacing Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda dry as a bone and just as crackling). In exchange to curing papa Blaze’s cancer, Johnny sold his soul without reading the fine print. Not that it would have helped, what with the contract written in Latin. Johhny goes on to have a brilliant career riding his motorcycle over all manner of conveyances and all sorts of distances. It’s not as dangerous as it sounds, since Johnny is pretty sure that Mephistopholes needs him alive, though for what reason he hasn’t shared. It’s a glamorous life on the road with groupies and a loyal road crew led by Mack (Donal Logue) who frets maternally over Johnny’s stunts and accepts without question the boss’ obsession with musty old tomes about the occult, all things monkey, and his slurping jellybeans from a martini glass instead of swiging beer with the guys. But Johnny’s life is also an empty one. No family and no love, at least until the requisite lost love, Roxanne (Eva Mendes), returns right before his latest and most daring jump, but only to interview him. She’s gone on to her own glamorous career in television news. Timing is everything, and despite a wild ride on the freeway outracing her van to win her heart, or at least a date for that evening, it’s also the moment when Mephistopheles turns up demanding a favor and not taking no for an answer. Johnny’s mission is to send some nasty demons back to Hell instead of dining with Roxie. Suddenly, and to his complete astonishment, he’s in flames, skeletal, and riding a souped up motocycle that leaves a track of molten asphalt and shock-waved storefronts in its wake. There’s no other way to describe it. It’s way cool.
The execution of the effects keeps things that way. In an age of CGI and bloated budgets, the filmmakers here have shown some restraint. Sure, things are afire, and very nasty things are prowling the planet, but instead of explosions and splatter, there are nifty quick takes of the true faces behind the human-like masks, and carefully thought out accretions of earth, water, and air that stay within their boundaries and still manage to be horrifying rather than merely creepy. Most of all there’s the gait and other assorted bits of body language with which they have bestowed the Ghost Rider himself. It’s definitely Cage, but translated seamlessly into the monster with the heart of gold. Molten, sure, but noble nonetheless.
Like his character, Cage walks between two worlds. With Ghost Rider, it’s between good and evil, with Cage, it’s between serious and camp. He can make the ordinary seem magically peculiar, and the magically peculiar seem ordinary, bringing a willing audience into the altered state. It’s his greatest gift and when used to advantage, as it is here, a delight in which to wallow with Cage doing Elvis-as-zenmaster with a deeply affecting straight face. As his mentor, Sam Elliot, with a silver mane and a twinkle of irony in his steely gaze, is the yin to Cage’s loopy yang, nursing Johnny back to reality after his bonfire of an evening and explaining exactly what has happened to him. Part of Mephiostopheles’ mordant sense of humor being to not clue his bounty hunters into either the job title or description. Cage working out the details, and not always correctly, makes for bright little bits of physical comedy that are grace notes in synch with the spirit of the character and of the film. The least interesting thing in the proceedings is Eva Mendes as the standard-issue girlfriend. She plays it with standard-issue inspriration and enough cleavage showing to spice up what is otherwise a bland character and, hence, one painfully out of place in this otherwise raucous romp.
The best thing an audience can do for itself while watching GHOST RIDER is to not think too hard about what’s going on. Just let it unfold while being the moment. It may not be the sharpest script to have made it to the screen, but it’s sense of fun and adventure makes it worth overlooking that oopsie.
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