Ordinarily I’d be into the idea of seeing Nicolas Cage’s face burn, but alas, “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” is not a documentary.
The original “Ghost Rider” was at least a flaming mess but the followup is a cruddy bore, alternating static, talky scenes in which the characters explain the back story to each other (you won’t care) to perfunctory, abbreviated action scenes (you won’t thrill). Its subtitle should have been Spirit of Downgrade, what with the budget trimmed back by 40 percent and its bleak, cheap-looking gray-brown locations in Eastern Europe, the place where movie careers go to die. The only part of this movie anyone’s ever going to remember is the pair of scenes in which Ghost Rider pees flame, although if the next installment is going to treat us to what happens when the Rider has to go no. 2, I think I’d rather sit through “Season of the Witch” again.
Tormented by his uncontrollable inner hothead, a sort of flame-broiled Incredible Hulk, Devil-cursed Johnny Blaze (Cage) flees to the Balkans for no particular reason. His dull sidekick (Idris Elba, doing a dodgy French accent) informs him that a kid named Danny (Fergus Riordan) is being pursued by the Satanic Roarke (Ciaran Hinds), who tricked Johnny Blaze into becoming Ghost Rider. But if Johnny can save the boy his curse will be lifted. In that case, he’ll be a regular guy again instead of a flaming hog-riding skeleton who gets to prowl the night breathing fire on bad guys, spitting machine-gun bullets and whipping the malevolent with his motorcycle chain of righteousness, but Johnny seems to think it’s a good deal so off he goes.
The girl, the kid’s hottie Gypsy mom, is played by Violante Placido (see what I mean about budget cuts? They couldn’t even afford Eva Mendes again). The paternity of the boy is unclear until Johnny figures it out for us, telling her, “You’re the Devil’s baby mama.” A mild and uninteresting villain working for the Devil, Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth) is also in pursuit, but he has no supernatural powers so it isn’t much of a fight when Ghost Rider shows up and shares his hellfire halitosis with Carrigan’s henchmen until their heads explode. Far too late in the story, Carrigan turns into a demon himself, a creep with the power to make everything he touches crumble to dust (nothing can survive his touch except a Twinkie, a gag that is the only funny one in the film). But his big scenes of mass corrosion merely add to the general sense of rust and decay about the production.
The horror isn’t scary, the action isn’t rousing (the Devil’s bodyguards can be distracted by simply throwing a bottle of wine in the air and then shooting them) and the comedy is not only lame but also undercuts any sense of demonic danger. “So that happened,” Johnny Blaze says, after one of Duraflame Dude tantrums. Other attempts at laugh lines sound merely like the sarcasm of the middle schoolers at whom the movie is aimed: “I’m sorry, did that hurt?” “Sorry, Jackass, but I’m dead,” “What are [the Devil’s] plans for his son? Is he putting money away for college, what?”
The directors, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, previously made the hilariously hyperactive action comedy “Crank,” and I never thought I’d see a movie of theirs that needed to pick up the pace, but the long stretches without special effects seem to fill no purpose except to drag the running time across the 90-minute mark. They’re like that piece of extra bun in the middle of the Big Mac, undisguised filler.
As for Cage, his Johnny Blaze seems less tortured than a torturer, with the audience being the victim. His jaw clenched and eyes bulging, Cage tries to shout some life into the character as he explains that his alter ego is always with him and “He’s scraping at the door, SCRAPING AT THE DOOR!” You’d think a guy who made both “Raising Arizona” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” would have an easier time playing “internal conflict.” Cage has become the acting equivalent of one of those South American dictators who keeps ordering up more parades in honor of his greatness as the people starve and seethe. What international task force can be sent to depose him from the multiplex marquees?