Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance 3-D

The lunatics behind the Crank movies shake up the comic book genre visually but can’t quite match the previous high standard of fun nonsense they’ve set themselves.

Ghost Rider 2 assumes that you’ve never seen Ghost Rider 1 and so gives you an animated introduction to your hero Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage), stunt motorcyclist who made a deal with Roarke aka the Devil, and is now cursed to spend his nights as a fiery skeleton roaring around the world sucking the souls out of guilty people. Guilty of anything at all, even illegal downloading, and sssshlurp there goes your soul… Hiding out in Eastern Europe he’s contacted by bibulous priest Moreau (Idris Elba) who promises to lift the curse if Blaze finds Nadya (Violante Placido) and protects her son Danny (Fergus Riordan), who just happens to be the Anti-Christ; and who Roarke needs for a solstice ceremony to walk the earth in a purpose-conceived mortal vessel capable of containing his immortal powers.

Johnny Whitworth, a Talking Movies favourite, is Blaze’s adversary Carrigan, Nadya’s ex and an associate of Roarke who counters the Rider’s supernatural powers with ever more ludicrously high-powered weaponry until a slumming Ciaran Hinds as Roarke decides he’s being inefficient and grants him the power of decay. Finally a supervillain, a showdown beckons even as Blaze holds Moreau to his promise to rid him of his supernatural powers. The final act is a ramble thru old favourites like Hellboy and Superman II but while a loveably drawling Whitworth has some fun you’ll be riveted by Cage’s self-parodic performance. All I could think of was Studio 60’s “Welcome TO the Nicolas Cage SHOW!” during an interrogation scene which should become comedy legend as Cage bulges his eyes, twitches his head, laughs maniacally, and sings his lines to suppress the emerging Rider.

Directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor make set-pieces such as an assault on a cameoing Anthony Head’s monastery vividly immediate, and their insistence on hand-held in-close camera-work elevates this genre nonsense above its scripting. Their flair for nonsense is also proudly displayed in absurdist moments like Moreau hanging upside down in a tree to the strains of the Marsellaise, and Blaze explaining how relieving himself when possessed by the Rider gives him a flamethrower to add to his usual weaponry of chains. But despite encouraging Nicolas Cage to let it all hang out there this is no Crank, and it falls a bit short of the gleeful knowingness of Drive Angry; despite its pounding ‘Led Zeppelin jamming’ soundtrack. An unusually reflective moment when Elba gives Blaze Holy Communion and the origin of the Rider are the only original elements of the script.

This is good silly fun, but unless you have a taste for nonsense or Nicolas Cage going mad, and those two categories are practically one category, it’s not essential viewing.

3/5

Any Other Business

What is one to do with thoughts that are far too long for Twitter but not nearly long enough for a proper blog post? Why round them up and turn them into a portmanteau blog post on television of course!

Johnny Whitworth Abu!
I was delighted to see Johnny Whitworth pop up in a supporting role pushing mind-opening drugs to Bradley Cooper’s protagonist in Limitless. Whitworth had a recurring role a while ago on CSI: Miami as Calleigh’s ex-boyfriend, a roguish narcotics officer deep undercover in a criminal gang, who later got back onto regular duty after more than a few questions about which side of the law his blurred loyalties now belonged to. He was always effortlessly charismatic in this part, aided by an awesome Southern burr which enlivened Brandoesque mumbling, so it’s nice to see his profile rising.

Meta-Textual Moira?
Moira Kirland may have necessitated a new technical term with a deranged reference in Castle season 2 episode ‘Tick, Tick, Tick…’ The brilliant unpredictability of Castle’s mysteries is in no small part down to the presence of Kirland and Rene Echevarria as writer/producers, as both of them were very important presences in the equally twisty Medium. In this particular Castle episode Dana Delaney appears as an FBI agent venerated by Castle. She mentions one of her past cases as being the Recapitator in Phoenix, Arizona. Kirland wrote some of the three-part Medium season 3 finale featuring extremely twisted serial killer the Recapitator, who left his first victim’s head on his second victim’s body, and his second victim’s head on his third victim’s body, and so on… But Medium is a CBS show while Castle is on ABC, and Medium’s supernatural premise inhabits a different type of fictional universe than Castle’s comic verisimilitude. The reference would clue-in Medium fans like me that darkness was imminent and indeed Kirland ended the episode with an almighty shock. But self-referential, inter-textual, non-own network promotional, in-jokey, audience-alerting touches like that surely need to have a term all their own. What’s a good one?

A Lenkov Touch
A post is imminent about his writing for CSI: NY but here let me note that the first pure Lenkov touch has been noticed in Hawaii Five-O. Peter M Lenkov left CSI: NY to run Hawaii Five-O for busy writer/producers JR Orci and Alex Kurtzman, and, with the help of fellow CSI scribe Sarah Goldfinger, he’s exceeded expectations with entertaining high-stakes mysteries. But a prolonged conversation between McGarrett and Dano about the respective tourist attractions of Hawaii and New Jersey was so spectacularly irrelevant to the plot that it could only have come from the absurdist Lenkov.

“I’m never leaving! You hear? Never!”
Talking of Hawaii Five-O let’s all loudly cheer Daniel Dae Kim’s awesomeness. The reboot of Hawaii Five-O has been used as a life-raft by Alex O’Loughlin (Moonlight was prematurely cancelled), Grace Park (BSG finally ran its course), and Scott Caan (Ocean’s 14 is never happening), but Daniel Dae Kim’s snagging of the role of Chin is the most impressive of them all. Not only does Kim get to use his actual accent speaking English, which I haven’t heard since his glory days as Agent Baker in Day 3 of 24, but he has contrived after 6 years on LOST to instantly jump straight into another show being shot on the same Hawaiian island of O’ahu. The chances of being able to make such a jump must be somewhere around the chances of being able to see Halley’s Comet pass earth and yet, and this is where things get delicious, if Hawaii Five-O runs for as long as its original incarnation (and it’s solidly entertaining popcorn TV in a beautiful setting so it has a reasonable chance of doing so) Kim will have managed to contrive no fewer than 18 years of filming in Hawaii…