Blaze Of Glory

Despite the critical slagging it got, the first Ghost Rider film wasn't all the way awful - at least not in my book. I liked the fact that it was almost slanted as a macabre kid's film. Sure, GR is a guy with a flaming skull for a head but that scary imagery aside, director and screenwriter Mark Steven Johnson gave his Ghost Rider movie a benign soul and a surplus of cornball one-liners. It was a silly, sweet natured film (Johnny Blaze's most prominent vice was a love of jelly beans) that just never, if you pardon the expression, caught on fire.

This reboot from the directing duo of Neveldine/Taylor (previously responsible for the Crank films) isn't nearly the same kind of softball effort. It's still PG-13 but it's an aggressive PG-13 that rides right on the border of being an R. The script, credited to Scott Gimple, Seth Hoffman, and David Goyer (assumedly some remnants of Goyer's old script from back when he and Blade director Stephen Norrington were working on a GR film are present in this version) is bare bones and just seems to have been used as a basic guideline by Neveldine and Taylor to get from one action scene to another. And I'd be surprised if Nicholas Cage was given any scripted dialogue because damn near everything that comes out of his mouth here sounds improvised.

This movie got some scorchingly negative word of mouth last December coming out of the Butt-Numb-Athon in Austin, TX, but maybe being screened amid a clutter of other (and, frankly, probably better) films wasn't an ideal showcase for it because this has "geek favorite" written all over it. It isn't in the upper echelon of comic book adaptations, like X: Men: First Class - instead it's a much scrappier, looser piece of work but taken on its own terms it's a lot of fun. Even though ex-stunt biker Johnny Blaze's vehicle of choice is a motorcycle, this movie is like some pimped-out jalopy - moving at improbable speeds, threatening to explode at any moment.

Neveldine and Taylor are famous for their death-defying shooting methods and Spirit of Vengeance is full of shots accomplished by means not to be duplicated at home. Their chaotic style isn't the most ideal fit for 3-D but I was surprised to find that it wasn't nearly as jarring as I expected. I still suspect that 2-D would be the better option in this case but I wasn't put off by the 3-D presentation.

Encoring as Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider, Nicholas Cage really tears into his dual role this time around. In the first film, the actor's natural eccentricity gave a welcome bit of color to an otherwise dull character but his performance here is destined to be legendary within the Cult of Cage. Given a second chance to bring this character to life, Cage doesn't hold a single quirky impulse back. He also really tears into the Jekyll/Hyde nature of Blaze and some of the film's best moments involve Blaze trying to keep the demon inside him from bursting free.

Not only is Cage playing Blaze again but he's also playing the Ghost Rider himself. In the first film, GR was a strictly CG creation but here it's Cage who is providing the movements for GR and it really makes a difference. If nothing else, this GR would've looked better to begin with because Neveldine and Taylor and their FX crew dispensed with the shiny, too-clean (as well as too tiny to my eyes) skull of Johnson's film as well as with the cartoony CG flames and really delivered a GR that looks 100% intense. Here the skull is charred and scuffed and the flames look convincing with plumes of thick black smoke coming off them. But as good as GR looks from an FX standpoint, it's really Cage's performance that sells it. His body language is great, giving GR a repertoire of distinctive movements that show that this character isn't just something belched out of a computer. The Ghost Rider is depicted as much more of a classic movie monster this time around rather than as a superhero and Cage clearly relished the chance to play that end of the part. As great as some of his lines as Blaze are, I loved some of his wordless bits as GR just as much.

This movie certainly isn't going to be an across the board crowd pleaser but then, brimstone bikers aren't for everyone. Nor is Nicholas Cage's acting nor is Neveldine/Taylor's style of filmmaking. So what you've got with Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is a movie that will inspire either admiration or confusion. Comic book adaptations are the stuff of mainstream blockbusters these days but Spirit of Vengeance is one film that puts the cult crowd first.

One Fan Can Make A Difference

Dreaming of being a superhero is pretty standard for young comic book buffs. After all, if you didn't enjoy fantasize about being a larger than life crime fighter, why were you even reading these books to begin with? As someone who was addicted to comics as a kid, I wore more than my fair share of superhero-themed Underoos and I'd be embarrassed to admit how old I was before I finally came to terms with the fact that I was never going to be the bearer of a real Green Lantern power ring. I knew that I'd never be Superman because I was pretty sure I hadn't been born on Krypton but it was permissible in my far-flung imaginings to think that becoming an approximate version of one of my favorite superheroes wasn't out of the question.

Getting older, though, those goofy dreams of adopting a superhero persona for real fade away - or, for some, become relegated to live action role-playing games. In the new movie Kick-Ass, however, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) - the adolescent comic book fan at the heart of the story - wonders why no one has ever taken the obvious-but-bold leap to become a real-life costumed hero. When he decides to be the first, he receives a brutal beating at the hands of some ordinary thugs - a beating that lands him in the hospital with metal plates now installed in his body and some serious nerve damage to boot. This, after all, is what happens when someone really tries to fight the kind of battles that comic book heroes have been fighting for years. What happens - especially if you're a scrawny adolescent kid - is that you get your ass handed to you.

After that savage first beating, the "this is how it would really be" portion of Kick-Ass is over. One swift alley fight is all the reality that this movie can tolerate. What follows is every bit as fanciful as anything found in the Marvel or DC pantheon. Forget radioactive spiders, forget alien power rings - in the real world, what really would've happened after Dave's first try at being a superhero is that he either would've died (or been permanently crippled) thanks to his injuries or else he would have pulled through intact but would never want to be Kick-Ass again. Instead, Dave recovers and actually feels motivated to continue with his one-man war on crime (he compares the new steel in his body to Wolverine's adamantium skeleton, natch). More incredible than that, he soon finds out that he isn't the only costumed avenger in the city of NY and that these other heroes are hardcore.

Operating on a level that Dave can't hope to touch, the mysterious duo of Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage, turning in one of his best performances - his Adam West-style delivery while in costume is pure gold) and Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz, soon to be seen again in the Let The Right One In remake) are a sociopathic father-daughter team who have a special hate-on for the city's biggest gangster, Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong). These two new heroes are so ruthless, well-trained, and well-armed that they pose a serious threat to D'Amico. Dave, on the other hand, muddles through his new hobby as a self-made superhero on behalf of his pie-eyed dream of helping others. Despite his lack of ability, Dave really is hero material - mostly for the fact that he cares. He doesn't need any Uncle Ben-style shock to teach him a lesson - he already thinks it's a good idea to help his fellow man.

As an adaptation, the movie's script - written by Jane Goldman along with director Matthew Vaughn - represents a vast improvement over comic scribe Mark Millar's smug, cynical source material (material redeemed on the comic page by some of legendary artist John Romita Jr.'s best work - one of the high points of the film, in fact, is a segment featuring J.R. Jr.'s art in limited animation). However, in making Dave a much more altruistic, morally grounded person than his unpleasant comic book counterpart, it also opens up a hole in the narrative. It was easy to accept the troll-like Dave of the comic going along with Big Daddy and Hit-Girl's wholesale slaughter of criminals but in the movie, one has to wonder if this is really what Dave had in mind when he dreamed about being a superhero.

First of all, it'd be more correct to call the self-styled costumed characters of Kick-Ass vigilantes rather than superheroes. If you'll let me get comic book geeky for a minute, there's an important difference. Superheroes, traditionally, don't kill. It's what separates them from vigilantes. The Punisher, for example, is a vigilante while Spider-Man and Captain America are not. Sure, you could say that anyone operating outside the law is, by definition, a vigilante. But to be a superhero involves a code of conduct. Batman might strike fear into the hearts of criminals but he never kills. A criminal might die in the midst of a battle with the Cowled Crusader, but never as the direct result of Batman's actions. The day Batman kills is the day he stops being Batman.

Given that, Dave's attitude towards murder is something that should've been addressed. We see that he's taken aback by Big Daddy and Hit-Girl's actions but he never suggests that killing shouldn't be a part of a hero's repertoire. Now, had he expressed a moral issue with using lethal force, Kick-Ass might've had his naivete thrown back in his face and he might've had to accept through bitter experience that a one-man war on crime can't be fought according to gentleman's rules but that should've been incorporated into his character's arc, seeing him go from an idealistic fanboy to a hardened superhero in the real world. The comics that inspired Dave ultimately prove useless to him (on the other hand, they prove to be good research for D'Amico's son Chris, played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and it might've been interesting to see him abandon his interest in comics as his illusions are stripped away.

Directed with plenty of panache by Matthew Vaughn and stocked with vivid performances, it's easy to get swept up in Kick-Ass but at the same time, I couldn't help but feel slightly put off by the movie's break-out character, Hit-Girl. While I didn't want any harm to come to the character (honestly, who wants to see a little girl get hurt?), and I liked Moretz's performance, the whole concept of the character rubbed me the wrong way. It's a kid with a foul-mouth, a blasé, too cool for school attitude when it comes to taking lives and who has advanced fighting skills that make most ninjas look as fleet as wounded elephants. Dave and his relatable insecurities was interesting to me whereas Hit-Girl was just a cartoon character seemingly created whole cloth from a checklist of what fanboys would find cool. Long before the climax, the whole movie has gone the cartoon route.

As cartoons go, however, Kick-Ass does a mostly super job. It's fun, on a certain kneejerk level. But like its pretend heroes, it's not quite bulletproof.

Knowing

Director Alex Proyas' latest genre foray doesn't follow the usual math, displaying an appreciable non-conformist streak. Maybe what's most unusual about Knowing is that Proyas affords his outlandish premise such serious consideration. There's no attempt to use irony to acknowledge or deflect the ludicrousness of the material. If anything, there's a real message that Proyas is preaching here. Whether you agree with that message or not is irrelevant - the fact that it evidences a point of view separates Knowing from what, say, Michael Bay might've done with this same story. Knowing feels personal in a way that big budget genre pieces seldom do.

The story that Knowing offers, passed through a succession of screenwriters and finally rewritten by the team of Stiles White and Juliet Snowden, is an equation for the End Times. When a time capsule filled with the drawings of elementary school children in the '50s is unearthed today, one entry falls into the hands of young Caleb Koestler (Chandler Canterbury), son to John Koestler (Nicholas Cage), a MIT professor and Astrophysicist. Unlike all the other capsule entries, which are all drawings, this one is a series of seemingly unrelated numbers. When John believes that he's divined a startling purpose to these numbers, the movie becomes a race against time to stop the disastrous events that they predict.

Along the way, Proyas puts Cage's character in the middle of two spectacular disasters that, even with his foreknowledge, he can't avert. Most notable of the two being an airplane crashing on a crowded highway that's stunningly staged by Proyas and, in its fiery aftermath, belies Knowing's PG-13 rating. For a modern science fiction film, though, Knowing is far from being heavy on action or special effects and when such elements are employed here they don't seem there to spike the audiences' attention - they just seem there because the story demanded it. While Knowing is a visually stunning movie, Proyas doesn't go for cool shots that only serve to distract - he takes an assured, straight-forward approach that is unfashionable today. Even most dramas have more jittery camerawork than this does. Knowing seems cut from a cloth of an earlier age of filmmaking (even down to the wonderful score by Marco Beltrami, which harkens back to Bernard Herrmann).

In the later half of Knowing, as events escalate, the overriding question is as much how to accept the inevitable as to how to avert it. Do we choose our time or is the end already an immutable event? Is everything that happens in the universe part of an intelligent design or is it random occurrence? The threat of doomsday always looms in genre films - from The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) to Armageddon (1998) - but no matter how dire the situation is, no matter how huge a rock is headed through space to pummel us, most are quick to end on the up note that our cards came up lucky and the Earth is safe again for another day. More brazen films, like Miracle Mile (1988) and The Rapture (1991) give their protagonists no recourse - except in their ideologies and in their dying dreams.

The beliefs in regards to our purpose on this planet and our place in the cosmic order that Knowing expresses are not universally shared - what beliefs are? - but even though they don't jibe with my personal philosophies, I appreciated the earnest presentation that Proyas gives them. Some might find the conclusion of Knowing too corny for words but putting my cynicism aside, I thought it was satisfying and true to itself. I think it's also true that any other resolution wouldn't have gone through in a movie of this size (reported budget: $50 million). But what some might perceive as a compromise feels like a genuine nod to spirituality to me. The epiphanies of the final stretch of Knowing would be come across as unbearable if they weren't played with the proper sincerity - and Proyas is successful in making a film with a certain set of convictions that is able to bear the merits of speculative entertainment rather than propoganda.

I don't know what kind of audience Knowing will find but I think it's a genre film worth attention and a confirmation of Proyas as director who possesses his own uncommon knowledge of how to avoid artistic catastrophes.