![]() ![]() It’s a Cage opera in miniature, destined for future fan reels dedicated to his frequent rococo weirdness. In one of the best scenes, he interrogates a bad guy, wielding his impending Ghost Rider transformation as a threat while also trying to hold it in (“It’s scratching at the door!” he cries as his eyes spasm into skeleton sockets - digitally assisted, although I assume Cage would transform himself if he could). In the past, he’s sometimes looked sleepy in even the most outlandish settings, but in parts of Spirit of Vengeance, he works up enough manic energy for the movie to resemble Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call Eastern Europe. That Neveldine/Taylor enthusiasm infects Cage. The resulting visuals are a grab bag of close-ups, low angles, and washed-out sky shots, like an exploitation version of late-period Michael Mann it’s not exactly high style, but it puts more effort into the cost-effective burning of rubber than the perfunctory Ghost Rider. Major proponents of digital cinematography, Neveldine and Taylor favor compact Red One cameras and hardy, stunt-happy cameramen (including themselves) who are willing to careen around blacktops and zoom off of cliffs on rigs. Vehicular chases and battles with various demonic superpowers ensue, all shot with scrappy energy. The child and his protective mother Nadya (Violante Placido) go on the run from the devil’s minions, and the rogue priest Moreau (Idris Elba) seeks Blaze’s help, promising to rid him of the Ghost Rider curse. The story is supernatural-thriller boilerplate: there’s a child (Fergus Riordan) who could bring about the apocalypse (or something) if the devil, in human form called Roarke (Ciarán Hinds), gets ahold of him. Just as Neveldine/Taylor is a sillier, more self-aware directing entity than Mark Steven Johnson, Spirit of Vengeance is a tighter, weirder, funnier enterprise than its predecessor. Instead, the film offers other pleasures. To be clear: this is still a PG-13 sequel with some presumed fidelity to the comics (David Goyer, who has worked on the Blade and Batman series, is a cowriter), and contains few to none of Crank‘s winking transgressions. Neveldine/Taylor are responsible for the gonzo Crank series, but trash movie aficionados should banish any thoughts of an electric-shock-powered Nicolas Cage. They’re credited as Neveldine/Taylor, better to resemble an advertising firm or videogame design collective. ![]() A new creative team takes over for Spirit of Vengeance, and one advantage over some other stops on Cage’s shlock-cinema tour is the guiding hand of filmmaking duo Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. ![]() It takes Johnny Blaze (Cage) - the stunt motorcyclist whose deal with the devil gave him the ability to shift into the skull-headed monster Ghost Rider - on a fiery, sweaty low-budget adventure through Romania and Turkey (playing themselves).īut this mercenary approach has allowed a degree of risk absent from the first movie, shepherded by Mark Steven Johnson, who applied everything he learned from his Daredevil movie about how to ruin a potential comics franchise with a strong cast. And Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance feels more akin to another Cage supernatural programmer like Drive Angry or Season of the Witch than a follow-up to one of his biggest hits. It was also surprisingly profitable.įive years later, Cage’s detours have become more winding. While he has alternated small, artsy projects and big, trashy paydays for much of his career, Ghost Rider was different, more low-rent than Cage’s usual low-rent movies, not to mention the recent wave of Marvel Comics adaptations. When the first Ghost Rider movie premiered in 2007, it was an unexpected turning point for actor (and one-time comic-book collector) Nicolas Cage. ![]()
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