HIGH DEF UNIVERSE

Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) made a deal with the devil to save his father in the first ghost rider movie and ended up with some some unexpected consequences. After that, any time he's in the presence of evil, he changes into the Ghost Rider, a living skeleton with a flaming head to pass out some justice.  In this second movie, there's some bad people after a young boy named Danny (Fergus Riordan) and his mother who have been protected by a secret order of priests.  One of them, Moreau (Idris Elba) knows they can no longer protect him and he's right.  The priests's fortress is attacked and Moreau is able to keep the evil forces at bay long enough for Danny and his mother to escape.  Afterwards, the priests realize that the only person that can help Danny is the Ghost Rider and they ask his help and promise him that they will lift his curse of being the Ghost Rider if he can save and return the boy. 

When the bad guys catch up with the boy and his mother, the Ghost Rider arrives and intervenes just in time. Johnny will soon be forced to face his nemesis Roark (Ciaran Hinds) and a creature that was once bad guy but has now transformed into a white haired creature named Ray Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth). Carrigan has been given the “power of decay” and now destroys anything he touches, including people  The bad guys have a simple agenda...keep the boy and his mother, and possibly eliminate the Ghost Rider. That literally is the plot of this paper thin movie.  The execution of  even this most basic of plots is poorly accomplished.  Much of the background information is not well developed and a there's no real connection with any of the characters.  

This film is purely style over substance, with all of the focus on creating cool special effects but with no effort whatsoever to develop a coherent plot or interesting characters.  The film tries to explain itself using comic book like graphics but that made even less sense to me. Clearly, these directors like fire. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance uses a lot of special effects and flames and the Ghost Rider is pretty freaky with his flaming head and the effects when Johnny Blaze turns into the Rider are also well done. The Rider disintegrates people with his flaming chains and basically vomits fire in their faces as well.

For action enthusiasts there are car chases, gun fire, rocket launchers, and a flaming motorcycle. As far as performances go, this is not one of Nicolas Cage's best. At times it’s almost like he's doing a bad Nicolas Cage impression. Everything that people and "Saturday Night Live" makes fun of him for (yelling or whispering his lines, crazy bug eyes, etc.) is exaggerated in this film and only bolsters that reputation..  I like bad movies and especially bad movies with tag lines. The difference here is that I like bad movies that know they are bad and they embrace it. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance doesn't know it’s a bad movie.. Directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor – a movie with double directors doesn't equal double the enjoyment which isn't surprising since I wasn't a fan of their Crank movies either.  The film has a lot of great special effects but much like the first one, there isn't much of a story to justify it.

What the film lacks in plot development, it makes up for in video quality. This is a very sharp transfer with a significant amount of detail. It looks great in the day time, and even better at night. The detail was a little too good at times, showing that Nicolas Cage's hair looks like straw. The 3D effects are often pretty cool and there's a few times where the images come at you.. 3-D fire is the best kind, after all. In general I don't think the 3-D made the movie any better and the picture is slightly darker than the 2D version.  There's some minor ghosting present but it's not too bad.  This 3D transfer isn't one of the better ones I've seen but it's decent..

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound. It creates an impressive soundscape that does help draw the listener into the action. The dialogue could have been a little louder for my taste, but it was clear enough and consistent throughout.  The rear channels were active throughout the movie and delivered a powerful sonic experience.  The sound effects had some excellent directionality and there was a lot of nice atmosphere as well.  Other than the low dialogue sound level, this is a fantastic mix and helps justify the movie's cost.  

While the movie disappointed me, the features did not – even though my usual favorite gag reel is missing. I even applaud the fact that the previews are able to be individually selected, when usually I think previews are just a waste of time. Having a 3-D featurette is also a unique change.

I don't know what exactly was going on with a majority of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. I watched it twice just to make sure that I wasn't in a bad mood or being unreasonably harsh. The first Ghost Rider was not an amazing movie and a sequel was not warranted.  As implausible as it was, Ghost Rider at least made sense even if it was lacking a good script.   All the major plot points in this film were underdeveloped or just missed the mark completely.  The special features combined with the disc's audio and video quality are the only things that saved this film's overall rating and were the only things that made watching the movie worthwhile. Fans of Neveldine and Taylor will still probably enjoy this movie if they liked their other ones like Crank, but for most people there really isn't much to recommend here.

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