Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Movie Review: Ghost Rider (Mat Rempit Ajaib)



Ghost Rider ain't really Mat Rempit Ajaib in Bahasa Malaysia... it's a private joke... *winks at Adrian Tai* Lemme tell y'all what this movie is about:

A mat rempit type motorcycle stunt rider, Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) spends his life pursuing ever more suicidal stunts in an effort to prove to himself that his life is still his own. Ever fearful of the fate that hangs over his head, he flees from his lifelong love, Roxanne Simpson (Eva Mendes, displaying more cleavage per minute of screentime than any actress in recent memory). Yet it seems that Blaze can't die, for Mephistopheles aka the Devil (Peter Fonda) wants him alive.

"You got something more than luck," says a crew member, shaking his head. "You got an angel looking out for you."

"Maybe it's something else," Blaze mutters to himself.

A wittier movie might have remembered that demons are fallen angels, and so Blaze does have an angel looking out him, after a fashion. The film misses the same opportunity later when Blackheart (Wes Bentley) shows up at a biker bar, for no apparent reason, and is told that admission is: Angels Only.

"You got a problem with that?" the biker asks menacingly.

"Actually, I do," Blackheart answers, passing on the chance to say, "Actually, I AM an angel." Hehehe... ;P

Ghost Rider gives hell to a random street thug, and later to a jail cell full of brutal prisoners (though he spares one terrified prisoner, declaring him innocent). Later, the Ghost Rider finds a way to use his power against his archenemy Blackheart, even though the latter is a demon and has no soul to burn.

But the idea of punishing the guilty just doesn't figure much into a story that doesn't have any human villains for the Ghost Rider to punish. Instead, the plot is driven by a war in hell between Mephistopheles and his brat kid Blackheart, who are battling over a supernatural MacGuffin, a contract for the souls of an entire town of damned souls.

It seems this contract was snatched out of Mephistopheles' hand 150 years ago by the Carter Slade Ghost Rider, and now Blackheart is after it. For reasons that seem murky at best, this contract, and the damned souls it commands, may give Blackheart the power to claim the entire earth as his own. Go figure.

In this war of powers and principalities, the Ghost Rider's role as a punisher of human wickedness is subordinated to a new job description invented for the film: the devil's "bounty hunter". Mephistopheles sends the Ghost Rider after Blackheart and his squad of fallen angels, and the film becomes a series of devil-on-devil smackdowns.

3 comments:

adriantai said...

from a comic reader, i find this movie to be a bit disappointing...

still watchable, but nothing memorable.

michsue said...

yeah exactly... =S

adriantai said...

u read comics?!?

or u find the movie watchable but not memorable...?! ;)