Long ago, a cowboy made a deal with the devil that turned him, at night when in the presence of evil, into a powerful demon.  He was known as the Ghost Rider.  More than a century later, another rider makes the same deal... this time, a stunt motorcyclist.  The result, when the demon emerges, is a creature with a flaming skull for a head, riding a chopper with wheels of fire.  He is the Devil's bounty hunter.

And he's played by Nicolas Cage!  And Nic Cage may have a ton of talent, but he's often shown poor judgement when doing genre films.  There were a lot of signs that this was going to be a bad one: it was delayed, and delayed again, and then they wouldn't screen it for critics.

But it turns out to be quite a bit of fun.  It's my kinda B movie.  Full of cartoony action, with just that right level of self-importance that a comic-book story needs to have to avoid coming off as campy.  Just don't expect anything above a B level from it.

And it has screen legend Peter Fonda as Satan!  The award for Best Performance As Satan In A Comic Book Movie goes to... sorry, Mr. Fonda, Peter Stormare in Constantine retains the title.  By a wide margin, actually.  Pete F. is not one of this film's strengths.

In other roles, Eva Mendez is not all that bad as the love interest (though the emphasis on her synthetic-looking cleavage does detract somewhat), Wes Bentley is perfect creepiness as the bad guy, and Sam Elliott is, as always, riveting.  (Too bad the way his role is written makes his whole presence almost pointless!)  Nothing stands out in the rest of the cast, but every performance is serviceable.

The motorcycle stunts are pretty well done.  The other special effects range from fair to excellent.  The quality of CGI that can be achieved in even trashy B movies these days is getting to be pretty darn impressive.  (Yet they still pull elementary booboos like having the sun rise and set backwards.  They filmed it in Australia and forgot to flip it for the northern hemisphere setting.)

The closing credits feature the most fucked up version ever of Stan Jones' "Ghost Riders In The Sky".