In the new Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Nicholas Cage, stars once again as Johnny Blaze, former daredevil and current emissary of revenge for hell. His mission: to save the son of Satan (Ciarán Hinds) from his devilish father. Danny (Fergus Riordon), Satan’s son and soon to be Anti-Christ according to the Ghost Rider, is joined by his mother Nadya (Violante Placido) in attempting to escape his demonically abusive father. Satan wants to use the boy’s body as a vessel for his evil majesty, because a normal human body is nearly powerless.

Aiding his fiery-ness in capturing and holding Danny is Ray Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth), a particularly lame villain. He’s a second rate character and hardly threatening. Satan eventually grants Ray immense (if ridiculous) power: the ability to cause the degradation of all things except Twinkies. For a 3D film the power is just as underwhelming as it sounds, in fact the entire film is unnecessarily underwhelming for 3D.  The bulk of the film is a long chase scene with the expected crashes and explosions. I personally found the chase scenes uninspired, the crashes unremarkable and the explosions mundane.

What’s puzzling is why Blaze, as Ghost Rider, is fighting with his boss, Satan. It’s never clear in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance how the Rider has the freedom. After all, the evil one has control of his soul. It’s also puzzling how Cage could be involved with such a dismal and uninspired project.

A grim reminder of how bad a movie can be, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance manages to disappointment at every level. There is almost no humor, the action seems artificial and contrived and the CGI is lame and inconsistent. In the original film the Ghost Rider’s flaming bike left a streak of burning asphalt down the highway, in this film there’s not even a trail. There are maybe three lame jokes in the film and they’re so weak it’s impossible to remember them. Even the action is like that in a bad biker movie. Fight scenes are derivative and predictable.

I don’t understand the direction either. In the first confrontation scene the Rider drives into the middle of Carrigan’s gang and stands, and stands and stands. He looks ominous, sure, but never attacks. He could have killed the entire gang in a few seconds. I understand, artistically, why the director had Ghost Rider stand interminably (unfortunately, had he acted, the Rider could have killed Carrigan’s gang, rescued the boy and saved the day). The movie, thankfully, would have been over in 20 minutes and I wouldn’t have had to suffer for the full hour and a half.

One more thing…how in the “blazes” can Ray Carrigan pull out his gun fill Ghost Rider full of holes and have Johnny Blaze end up in the hospital. Ghost Rider has always been able to take immense punishment with impunity. Later the Rider takes direct hits from shoulder fired rockets and shakes them off. This type of inconsistency is small compared to the rest of this mess of a film but it is a distraction. I would never recommend Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance even to the most hardcore movie maniac.

Rating 0.5 out of 5.