Ghost Rider

Through generations the Devil has tricked humans into servitude as his bounty hunter, the Ghost Rider, tasked with hunting down the souls of those who have made a pact with him. The last Ghost Rider was sent to collect on such a pact, called the Contract of San Venganza, containing 1000 souls, but realizing the power that it would grant the Devil on Earth, he instead fled and hid the Contract.

More than a century later we meet Johnny Blaze (Matt Long), a teenager who performs motorcycle stunts with his chain-smoking dad at a small carnival. To save his dad from cancer he signs a deal with the Devil (Peter Fonda), but while the Devil cures his dad he kills him a few hours later during a stunt. Johnny runs away with the realization that the Devil will collect his dues one day.

Several years later an adult Johnny (Nicolas Cage) still does motorcycle stunt, only now they are much more deadly. He has realized that the contract with the Devil protects him from harm, but he has not heard anything from him since the day of his father's death. But one night the Devil shows up and holds Johnny to his contract. He makes Johnny into the Ghost Rider and tasks him with hunting down some rogue demons who are looking for the Contract of San Venganza to overthrow the Devil and conquer Earth for themselves. Reluctantly Johnny takes on the role and goes on the hunt, but the demons are not stopped easily and soon they begin to target the people around him to stop the Ghost Rider.

When Ghost Rider was released it was not received very well either by the public or the critics and it made the least money of the three Marvel comic adaptions that year (the other two being Spider-Man 3 and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer). I, on the other hand, think it was a quite good movie and in my opinion it was far better than the other two. It is an action-filled movie with great special effects (although they are getting a little dated) and it also has quite a bit of humour, much of it showing that it does not take itself too seriously. It is not a movie with great acting, even by the veterans Peter Fonda and Sam Elliot, but everyone plays their part well enough to keep me in the story. Nor is the plot particularly groundbreaking, but with a movie like this, where the focus is more on action and special effects, that does not bother me much. I had two hours of fun watching Ghost Rider and will surely watch it again at some point.

Ghost Rider is encoded in AVC at 1080p and is shown at an aspect ratio of 2.40:1 as it was in theatres. This is a fantastic looking movie with hardly any faults. Every scene is detailed and crisp with natural and vivid colours and excellent contrast. Close-ups of the actors show every detail down to the individual pores and wrinkles in their skin and every stray hair on their head. The blacks are deep with minimal artefacts and there are plenty of details in dark areas, with the many night scenes clearly showing all the action on screen, helped along by the ever-present flames, which give a nice-looking contrast to the darkness. I did not notice any use of digital noise reduction, edge enhancement, or other manipulation of the source image, but there are one or two scenes where compression causes slight banding to occur, giving a less than perfect transition between shades.

This is perhaps not the best picture I have seen on Blu-ray, but it is pretty close. Except for the minimal banding this movie deserves a top mark for its video, although it is at the low end of that grade, and I would highly recommend it for use as reference material.

This release comes with a lossless English 5.1 LPCM audio track that is even better than its picture quality. It is incredibly immersive with all speakers being used more or less constantly. All dialogue comes through the front speakers clearly, never getting drowned in effects or ambient noises. I did not have to adjust my volume at any point to hear the actors' lines. The subwoofer is rarely silent and it rumbles impressively from explosions, roaring motorcycle engines, and the deep and grating voice of the Ghost Rider. The rear speakers also have a lot to do in this movie and most of the time they deliver an impressively good spatial feel with excellent directional accuracy on ambient noises and effects.

This is among the absolute best audio tracks I have ever heard on a Blu-ray and it is easily good enough to be used as reference. It put my speakers through a thorough workout and although my neighbours are probably not too happy, it would be a shame not to crank up the volume on an audio track like this.

There are several extras included on this release with two audio commentaries and three featurettes, as well as a couple of trailers. The three featurettes are encoded in 1080i MPEG-2 with 2.0 Dolby Digital audio while the trailers are 1080p.

Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Mark Steven Johnson & Visual Effects Supervisor Kevin Mack - As commentaries go this was fairly interesting and informative. Mack shares a lot of nice titbits about the special effects of the movie, while Johnson, among other things, talks about the extra footage on the extended cut of the movie. Generally this was an above-average commentary and the back-patting was kept to a minimum.
Audio Commentary with Producer Gary Foster - This was not as good a track as the first one. Foster has a quite monotone voice and I did not find him very interesting. I only sampled this track, so I might have missed something good though.
Spirit of Vengeance, Spirit of Adventure, and Spirit of Execution (82 min.) - Three featurettes that combined cover almost every step of the movie production, from initial concept and casting, through filming, and ending with the post-production stages. There are plenty of interesting cast and crew interviews and it is fairly light on the usual back-patting, making these featurettes among the better of their kind.
Trailers - Spider-Man 3 and Surf's Up

I am one of those people who can never have enough extras on a release, although quantity does not help if the quality lacks. Ghost Rider does not have that many, but the ones that are included are generally good and entertaining.

I think Ghost Rider is an underrated movie. It might not be a great work of art or even a particularly original action/superhero film, but it has good entertainment value, especially if you do not take it too seriously and can see the fun in a flaming motorbike that comes when it is called and which can drive up vertical surfaces. Add to that the excellent video quality and an audio track that is completely immersive and you have two hours of very good entertainment, on top of which you get a couple of nice extras that are fairly watchable.