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Ghost Rider

Ghost Rider, a movie based on the Marvel Comic, is a guide to what you should do if your father is terminally ill and your sweetheart is about to leave you: sell your soul to a demon.

The demon (cooly played by Peter Fonda) will eventually break his promise, and your heart, but you will be turned into an immortal, leather-clad skeleton biker with a fiery skull who can set bad guys on fire or turn their eyes into lumps of burning charcoal. It sounds like a good deal if you live in a video game.

Johnny Blaze (Nicholas Cage) is a motorcycle stuntman by day and the fiery Ghost Rider by night, ridding the world of evil ghosts.

And that's as far as the plot goes. There is no dramatic drive, and the story simply serves as a framework in which the filmmakers stuff in the action, most of which is throwing people off vehicles or whipping them with an iron chain.

Of course, every superhero movie needs the obligatory love interest, and, in Ghost Rider, this is Eva Mendes. She plays her role well, and, to a certain extent, saves the movie from being a forgettable one.

Mendes, with her looks and acting talent, is an A-list star in the making. What she needs is a good director who allows her to act with her shirt fully-buttoned - something that director Mark Steven Johnson hasn't let her do in Ghost Rider.

Cage, despite his outstanding catalogue of action blockbusters such as The Rock and Face/Off, is an embarrassment. Instead of expressing his tortured state of mind, when he tweaks his facial muscles he looks like a man suffering from bowel trouble.

There are few moments - such as when Blaze munches jelly beans or listens to the music of The Carpenters - when Cage is allowed to express his naturally neurotic quality as an actor. But such moments are few and far between, as Johnson is more interested in setting fire to everything in sight.

The film could make a great game. But why see it if you already have a PlayStation?

Ghost Rider is now showing

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