One of my favorite jokes in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is that the movie takes place in Romania without offering any compelling explanation as to why. If you’ve seen enough cheap American genre movies in the last several years (particularly the straight-to-DVD releases), the joke should register pretty quickly. Many of these productions have been shot in Romania for financial reasons, though the films usually try to disguise the country as someplace else—and the generally witless attempts only make them feel cheaper. But directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank, Gamer) tend to embrace the cheapest and most disreputable aspects of film production, regardless of whether they’re making a big-studio action picture like this. Their location work is inventive and often hilariously inappropriate. When Nicolas Cage has a heart-to-heart with the movie’s obligatory preteen sidekick, he takes him to the nearest diner, a communal-style roadhouse where the waitress brings them a big plate of cabbage.