Paramount updates Ghost with 4K remastered version Ghost Paramount Presents Blu-ray $29.99
Sam Wheat (Patrick Swayze) appears to have it made: he’s got a good job at a bank working with his best friend Carl Bruner (Tony Goldwyn), he’s moving into a new apartment with his wonderful girlfriend Molly Jensen (Demi Moore), and their relationship might be turning into something long-term. Yet, there’s a feeling in the pit of his stomach that good things can’t last, an instinct that turns out to be right on the
money when a man who appears to be a mugger shoots and kills Sam when he and Molly are returning from a performance of Hamlet. A tunnel of light appears in the sky as Sam watches Molly cradling his bloody body, but instead of moving onto the other side, Sam sticks around. Desperate for closure and desperate to ease Molly’s heartbreak, Sam discovers Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg), a socalled spiritual medium who normally scams her customers but actually hears his voice. With Oda Mae’s reluctant assistance, Sam tracks down the mugger, a man named Willie
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Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg gets a good look from Sam Wheat (Patrick Swayze) in Ghost. Lopez (Rick Aviles), and inadvertently uncovers a corporate conspiracy that puts Mollie in danger. On paper, Ghost is a pretty wild gamble. The film is, more or less, a romance/sci-fi/comedy/thriller/ mystery/drama – not a combination one sees regularly. Although the film essentially shies away from any specific religious talk, it is genuinely and unabashedly spiritual, with a “good” afterlife signified by the tunnel of light, and a “bad” afterlife in which howling shadows rise up and pull spirits into the ground. The movie tests the audience’s suspension of disbelief at its most sincere moments, and that sincerity is, in and of itself, a high-wire act, frequently scored to the intensely sentimental chords of “Unchained Melody.” On top of all that, the movie is (as both men now laugh about) in the hands of Jerry Zucker, whose previous work consisted of spoof movies such as Airplane! and Top Secret!, which he directed with his brother David Zucker, and their mutual collaborator Jim Abrahams. Yet, 30 years later, the movie works, thanks to a number of pieces falling perfectly in place. At the heart of Ghost’s success is the casting, which is outstanding across the board. Swayze is the film’s first big win. He was coming off of the success of Road House, a movie that prompted Zucker to say “over my dead body” when it came to letting Swayze play Sam Wheat. Yet Road House is, in a weird way, a great example of why Swayze works for Ghost. Both films provide a great example of Swayze’s ability to subvert expectations, to go for a
different tone or attitude than most actors would’ve been inclined to. The sincerity of Ghost’s romance and the intensity of the mystery both seem to call for a traditional, straightforward masculinity, yet Swayze allows Sam to be goofy and nervous, struggling with his own anxieties. During the film’s infamous pottery scene, before both he and Moore turn up the sexiness, Sam accidentally knocks over her first attempt at making a pot and giggles about it. There’s a relaxed quality about him that makes him a great fit for the film’s funny and serious sides. Of course, as much as Swayze contributes, no performer in the film is better at blending the movie’s tones than Goldberg, who was rewarded for her efforts with the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. She deserves it, too: from the moment she comes on screen, there’s no question that Oda Mae Brown represents Goldberg in her comic prime. Swayze may be the ghost, but it’s Goldberg who practically glows the whole movie with an other-worldly charisma, elevating the mood with her wit even as the film gets into dark and unpleasant territory. She has excellent comic chemistry with Swayze, especially in a sequence late in the movie where he accompanies her into his old bank, and she handles the film’s dramatic passages with equal skill. There is one scene, near the film’s climax, that requires such a leap of faith from the audience, and it’s a testament to Goldberg, Swayze and Moore that the moment works, even with Zucker’s necessary sleight of hand to obscure the reality of the scene.
