Yet another Marvel Comic turned unmarvelous movie, about an Evel Knievel motorcycle daredevil (Nicolas Cage, with a black divot of a hairpiece) who has sold his soul to Mephistopheles (a bouffant Peter Fonda), though he flees his responsibilities as "the Devil's bounty hunter" and continues to pursue his chosen vocation. One of his stunts has him jumping the length of a football field over churning helicopter blades, "from field goal to field goal." No fewer than three different people employ that expression — "from field goal to field goal" — and you can only wonder why none of these actors, or else, in consideration of the collaborative nature of the medium, one of the producers, or the assistant director, or the script girl, or the best boy, or somebody, couldn't have spoken up to the writer and director, Mark Steven Johnson, and said, "Mark Steven, I'm not the writer here, but you know, they're really not called field goals, they're called goalposts." Not that that would have fixed the movie. It starts off with one of those patience-taxing prologues which keeps you waiting twenty minutes for the star to appear, and which offers in his place a youthful incarnation that looks nothing like him. (At least the love interest is given a mole on her cheek to match that of Eva Mendes.) Even after that, the star tends to disappear whenever the action, so to speak, heats up, his head to be replaced at such times by a flaming skull (ooohhh!). And the action itself is of course not only cartoonish but a literal cartoon. The general effect is soporific — despite the fact that the Son of Satan (Wes Bentley), whose touch turns men to ash, is out to conquer the world — and the only counter to that effect is the ticklesome effect of the lame-brained dialogue. (2007) — Duncan Shepherd
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