(Even the classless yet potentially riotous sight of Ghost Rider urinating flame fails to draw a laugh.) But then again, the script is probably best when it steers clear of attempted humor, as Cage’s “you’re the devil’s baby-mama” line reading and a 10-years-too-late Jerry Springer joke attest to. “Spirit of Vengeance” is weighted down for long stretches in the middle, as it starts to treat its own religious hokum plotline with undue seriousness. Given a franchise based around a flaming, chain-wielding biker-warrior hellspawn, it’s strange that the filmmakers should be so quick to push the character into the margins. Shot with low, upward-facing angles and frequently cutting away to acid-trip dream sequences, the fighting is hard to wrap one’s head around, and the titular hero’s movements are so blurred by jump cuts and quick closeups that he rarely comes into focus. The final setpiece finally gives the audience its money’s worth, with a decently staged freeway chase, but until that point, the action sequences bear the brunt of the film’s budgetary limitations. That this accentless boy has a gorgeous, heavily accented Roma mother (Violante Placido) is pursued by a gaggle of indistinguishable thugs (led by the perversely nonthreatening Johnny Whitworth) and gets to re-enact the unlikely-father-figure bonding scenes from “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” with Cage is all par for course. Moreau needs his help finding a young boy (Fergus Riordan) who may be the devil’s spawn, and promises to reverse Blaze’s curse if he complies. Cage actually spends the vast majority of the film in mournful human form, starting off in hiding in Eastern Europe (the onscreen titles don’t get any more specific than that), where rebel monk Moreau (Elba) tracks him down. The rest, however, refuses to adhere to this what-the-hell principle, stranding its players in a muddily shot morass.Ĭage reprises his role as Johnny Blaze, a onetime stunt motorcyclist who once made a deal with the devil’s earthly incarnation, the prosaically monikered Rourke (Ciaran Hinds), and now suffers from periodic bouts of demonological transformation, turning into a biker with a fiery skull.Īt least, that’s the backstory. Idris Elba, for one, goes for the gusto in his absurd role as an alcoholic, motorcycle-riding French monk, and Cage is gifted a sublimely extended freakout moment that should slot in perfectly after “Wicker Man” outtakes in one of the star’s hall-of-shame highlight reels on YouTube. Directed by the Mark Neveldine-Brian Taylor team responsible for “Crank,” one of the most enjoyably trashy actioners in recent memory, “Spirit of Vengeance” imports only a few whiffs of that film’s Red Bull-drenched anarchy.
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