The Last Ride

Just watched “The Last Ride” on DVD. It’s a kind of dramatic action.

IMDB rating: 4.6 out of 10
My rating: 4 out of 10
Celebrity highlights: Dennis Hopper, Will Patton, and Fred Ward play three out of four main characters.

This movie is a failed experiment. I mean I am all for experimentation and fresh ideas, but some are so obviously wrong, that one knows before trying. The idea here is basically to mix an action movie about fast cars and hot babes with a poor drama and complexity of family relationships of a soap opera. Of course, hot babes don’t go at all with the family of soap operas, so they had to be got rid off.

The problem with this mix is that fast car action films do not usually provide good entertainment. They are boring after the first 20 minutes. Soap operas are bad at providing drama. They are usually boring after the first 5 minutes. And both of these are usually very shallow. Mixing two shallow bads into one movie makes it an awful one.

And it’s the good thing that actors tried at least to do something to improve the film. I could see it. But there was a need for something else, something that would help them. And there was nothing. Car photography was very traditional. One old car and two modern cars shot from the same old points of view with the same old light. The story line was poor, with everchanging pace and lots of plot holes. There were practically now special effects, fights, car chases or hot babes. No drama. Practically no dead bodies (one brifly in the beginning of the film, two in the middle (although only one shown), and two in the end (but again, deaths and not dead bodies). Overall very PGish.

This movie is a waste of time, which is no surprise considering that it was done for television.

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