One Wickedly Hot Movie

Rating: 8/10 (20 January 2008)

The theme of humans selling their souls to the devil in exchange for earthly advantages is a classic one that has never before received quite the spectacular kind of treatment as it does in GHOST RIDER. Anyone who has any doubt that we have entered the golden age of comic book movies can watch this film with complete satisfaction and doubt no more.
Taken for what it is, Ghost Rider as a movie achieves magnificently exactly what the best of the classic comic books achieved with pen and ink and paper. It weaves together challenging human drama, moral dilemma, and super-sized action to create brilliantly mesmerizing stories. As fantastic as the special effects in this movie are, what makes them super extraordinary is that they somehow appear completely natural. A burning talking skull is one thing but a flaming motorcycle that drives up walls and through water is not to be missed.
At the beginning of this movie, viewers may find themselves only intrigued when learning about the age-old legend of the Ghost Rider and some may even dismiss it as boring bullish hype. That changes when we see the young Johnny Blaze discover his stunt-rider father has terminal cancer, then sells his soul to the devil Mephistopheles (played wickedly enough by Peter Fonda) to save him. The only problem is that Mephistopheles, as everybody knows, is a liar, and he saves the senior Blaze's life just long enough to end it in a freak accident. Nevertheless, the deal stands and costs Johnny Blaze, among other things, Roxanne, the love of his life. He matures into a man whose phenomenal success does nothing to prevent him from being haunted by a death wish and the knowledge that he one day will have to give the devil what he promised him.
What Blaze does not know is that his entire being has been infused with the power of hellfire that not only guarantees his soul to the devil but will transform him into the monstrous Ghost Rider. In a twist of hellish fate, Mephistopheles offers him the opportunity to win his soul back if he will help him fight his own son, the incorrigibly malevolent Blackheart (Wes Bentley is that really you?) and his band of renegade angels. The beautiful irony here is that by helping the devil to defeat his rebellious demons, the Ghost Rider discovers the way to best fight his own.
At first thought, Nicolas Cage seems anything but the most likely actor to play Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider. However, to quote a character describing Ghost Rider to the reporter Roxanne: "It was an edge look but he totally pulled it off." So did Eva Mendes, who as Roxanne Simpson demonstrates she's not only ten-star gorgeous but a very capable leading actress. Matt Long and Raquel Alessi get the movie off to a solid start as the younger Blaze and Roxanne. The 62-year-old Sam Elliot is in fine form as the cemetery grounds keeper who turns out to be something much more than that. Have to give kudos as well to director Mark Steven Johnson for placing Elliot in a role that simultaneously pays tribute to the western genre and to the legend of the Ghost Rider.
There is no sympathy for the devil in Ghost Rider because in Johnny Blaze's struggle to achieve heroic integrity by overcoming negative circumstances, naive choices, and personal inner demons, it becomes easy to see one's own struggles to live a life of meaning and substance. Such portrayals are the reason many classic comic books have never been just "funny books." In actuality, the medium as cultivated by Stan Lee, Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, and other pioneers of the art has given us some of the best characters, myths, and stories of modern literature. Anyone looking for proof need only count the number of blockbuster films that have been adapted from comics and graphic novels over the past decade. Ghost Rider is one of the best yet.
by Author-Poet Aberjhani, author of "Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World"