4.5 Stars (out of 5) - Rated PG-13

Synopsis

In the successor to the worldwide hit Ghost Rider, Johnny Blaze, still struggling with his curse as the devil's bounty hunter, is hiding out in a remote part of Eastern Europe when he is recruited by a secret sect of the church to save a young boy from the devil. At first, Johnny is reluctant to embrace the power of the Ghost Rider, but it is the only way to protect the boy and possibly rid himself of the curse forever.

Starring:

Nicolas Cage, Ciarán Hinds, Violante Placido, Johnny Whitworth, Christopher Lambert, Fergus Riordan, Idris Elba

Director:

Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor

Blu-ray Release Date:

June 12, 2012

Subtitles:

English, English SDH, French, Spanish

Rating

Overall rating weighted as follows:

Audio 40%, Video 40%, Special Features 20%, Movie - its just our opinion so take it with a grain of salt

Audio 4.6 Stars (out of 5)

Dolby and DTS Demo Discs used as basis for comparison

Subwoofer - 4.5 Stars

Dialog - 5.0 Stars

Surround Effects - 4.0 Stars

Dynamic Range - 5.0 Stars

English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, French: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Catalan: Dolby Digital 5.1

This DTS-HD master audio mix adds more to the movie than the movie itself. Surround effects are utilized often and keep your ears busy with sounds of motorcycles, clanking chains of the rider, ricocheting bullets, locusts, and the flickering sound of devilish flames. Low frequencies get lots of attention with sounds of heavy gunfire, wide explosions, distant thunder, car crashes, and big rolling balls of fire. Dialog has no problems delivering cheesy lines with clean clarity.

Video 4.7 Stars (out of 5)

Spears & Munsil Benchmark Blu-ray Edition used as basis for comparison

Color Accuracy - 4.5 Stars

Shadow detail - 4.5 Stars

Clarity - 5.0 Stars

Skin tones - 5.0 Stars

Compression - 4.5 Stars

Codec: MPEG-4 AVC, Resolution: 1080p, Aspect ratio: 2.40:1, Original Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1

The clarity on this Blu-ray is razor-sharp with very little film grain. The sharp picture quality makes it easy to see the fine details in clothing textures, tiny wrinkles, small face pores, black asphalt, and smoldering black leather jackets. The visual style of the movie changes from time to time and so does the color scheme, sometimes things look washed out, and sometimes it's way too dark. Overall colors are a little on the cold side but fire shines bright red and dark black soot filled smoke is interesting to look at. I noticed a few problems with banding, but skin tones that weren't on fire looked good.

Bonus Features 4.0 Stars (out of 5)

Directors' Expanded Video Commentary

The Path to Vengeance: Making Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance Six-Part Documentary, Including:

• Blazing a New Path, a behind-the-scenes look at how the film was made;

• Patience Is Not a Virtue: Pre-Production, an in-depth look at the challenges the production crew had during pre-productions;

• We Will Burn This City To Bitter Ashes, allowing for the discovery of the shooting locations in Romania and Eastern Europe;

• To Hell and Back: Production, a look at the shooting style that directors brought to the film and some of the key stunt sequences;

• Walking in Both Worlds: Moving into Post-Production, exploring the challenges of completing a film; and

• The Fires of Hell Will Purify You: Release.

Deleted Scenes

Movie - 1.5 Stars (out of 5)

Review

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance features Nicolas Cage at his worst. My wife had no interest in watching this movie with me, but I made her watch the interrogation scene just to show her how far Cage had fallen from grace. She didn't weep over it, we both just chuckled and shook our heads in shame. I laughed out loud several times because this movie was so comically bad. It was directed in such an insanely haphazard manner, I wondered if the directors were on some sort of brain melting drugs. The characters are written and acted so over the top it's hard to pick out a good performance. The story and the added lore to the character were almost interesting, but the directing and bad acting stole any good will the script may have had. There are about 3 action sequences, I remember each one having strange moments leaving me asking, “Why did they do that? .The special effects were decent and much darker than the first Ghost Rider, but even though the first movie is a known stinker this one is much worse.