“Was that movie as terrible as I remember it?” Day 2: Ghost Rider

Ghost Rider (2007)

Written and Directed by Mark Steven Johnson

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendez, Wes Bentley, Sam Elliot, and Peter Fonda

I didn’t know this until I started writing this review that Mark Steven Johnson wrote and directed both today’s movie (Ghost Rider) and yesterday’s movie (Daredevil). I will say that I liked this movie much more than I liked Daredevil. I think with a movie like Ghost Rider tone is everything. There’s a cheese factor unquestionably built in to a movie whose hero is a skeleton that’s wearing biker clothes and on fire riding a chopper. Nicolas Cage, Peter Fonda, and Sam Elliot obviously know this and so does Johnson, as the dialogue and action definitely give a wink to the cheese factor in the premise. It’s a movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously, which makes parts of it a lot of fun. The part that doesn’t work, and it really doesn’t work is Wes Bentley as Blackheart (that’s right, that’s his name). Wes Bentley, who is probably better known for being the creepy guy with the camera on American Beauty, is definitely good at creepy, but he’s not at all believable as evil and laughable when trying to be foreboding. It’s a case of miscasting up there with Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars series, Denise Richardson as nuclear physicist Christmas Jones in The World Is Not Enough, Renee Zellweger as a viable love interest in any number of movies, or Paul Walker in, well, anything. If it were not for his performance, I’d give this a solid 6.5 out of 10, but with it, I’ll have to give it a 4.