Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance DVD/Blu-ray Review

Written by Kirk Baird

The demon-for-good Ghost Rider is back, as the Devil plots to assume a new, more powerful form to allow him to wreak havoc on Earth. Motorcycle daredevil Johnny Blaze and his nighttime fiery alter ego Ghost Rider are all that can stop him. It’s an easy plot for a film that chugs along at a high rate of speed — and doing its best not to be slowed down by plot or character development.

Considering the collective letdown from 2007’s Ghost Rider, the approach to the 2011 sequel from everyone — new directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor and star Nicolas Cage — is “let’s not pretend this is anything but what you expect it to be and just have fun doing it.”

With no air of pretension hanging over this suitable for drive-in comic-book hero film now out on DVD and Blu-ray, there’s no other way to take anything that happens in the 90-plus minutes than with than with a smile, a shrug, and the acknowledgement, “Hey, the special effects are much better this time.”

Cage, as most everyone knows, owes millions in unpaid taxes to the IRS, which means you can see him in just about anything these days. The actor may be selling his soul to Hollywood to square himself with the government, but at least he’s having fun doing it. And in a purely guilty pleasure kind of way, so are we with Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.