Northwest Cycle Report

From IMDB.com:

In Ghost Rider, adapted from the Marvel Comic, Nicolas Cage stars as Johnny Blaze, a superstar motorcycle stunt rider who long ago made a deal with the Devil: he’s sold his soul in order to protect those most important to him, his father and his childhood sweetheart, Roxanne (Eva Mendes). What does the Devil want in return? By day, Johnny is still a stunt rider, but at night, he’s a bounty hunter of rogue demons known as Ghost Rider, forced to do the Devil’s bidding.

As a young man, Johnny Blaze traded his soul to the devil to save his father. As an adult, Blaze is a motorcycle jumper bent on determining if his success is the result of his talent or the Devil (Peter Fonda) keeping him alive to do his bidding.

When the Devil is challenged by Blackheart for control of a contract on 1,000 souls, he calls in his marker with Blaze and thus is born the Ghost Rider, a flame-engulfed wraith on a chopper. To motivate Blaze to do his bidding, the Devil agrees to return Blaze’s soul if he defeats Blackheart and returns the contract to him.

What follows are some entertaining fight scenes incorporating some spectacular special effects all leading up to a final confrontation between Blaze/Ghost Rider and Blackheart.

While motorcycles certainly figure prominently in the film, Ghost Rider is no more a “motorcycle movie” than Batman is a “car movie”. The film reinforces cliche stereotypes of sport bike riders (street riding without a helmet, stunting on the freeway) and tattoed, beer-bellied outlaw bikers (the only other bikers in the film are cliche “Angels” in a “biker bar” in the middle of the desert).

Nicolas Cage’s performance as Johnny Blaze is typical Nicolas Cage; quirky and odd. Cage’s Blaze listens to The Carpenters and “drinks” Jelly Belly’s out of a martini class. There is a little Elvis in there with his sunglasses and poses. Eva Mendes is solid as Roxanne although one cannot help but feel that the filmakers made excessive use of her “assets” to distract the viewer from the lightweight plot. (One moviegoer wondered if she owned a piece of clothing with a top button.) A little sizzle from this beautiful actress is fine but the wardrobe choices here appeared contrived to the point of comedic.

With this review I am introducing a new Northwest Cycle News rating system:

Upshift - A thumbs up recommendation; definitely worth a look
Neutral - Don’t make special plans but if you have nothing better to do, check it out
Downshift - Not worth your time

Ghost Rider, while an entertaining diversion, definitely left me idling in Neutral.