Last Ride

I often drew a comparison between Last Ride and Clint Eastwood's Perfect World while watching the movie and even though Perfect World may be an overall better movie, something about Kevin Costner's character seemed always a little odd to me. So Costner playing a convict who is actually quite the good guy, but unfortunately misunderstood. More of a tragic figure than a ruthless villain who kidnapped a strange kid.

Hugo Weaving's character is not as likable as Costner's, but that's what makes him so special. He is real. He is a bad person, but the unfortunate circumstances made him that bad. He is violent, he is narrow minded, he is a coward, selfish and yet he does love his son and tries in his own way to do what he thinks is best for him. He tries in his own way to protect him.

Last Ride is certainly worth watching just for the two actors. Hugo Weaving is a great actor and he manages to create some sympathy for a very ugly character. Tom Russel is also very great and is throughout the movie very convincing.

The movie is slow paced. Very meditative. It's a road movie through the wilderness of Australia with an almost predictable, yet still very touching and heartbreaking ending.

It's not Perfect World, but it delivers something Eastwood's movie didn't deliver, at least for me. Last Ride is more authentic, more realistic and should satisfy the people who never really believed Kevin Costner's character.

Diane and I saw this engrossing examination of the other side of human existence; a side that as portrayed in Last Ride would probably be unfamiliar, unappealing and unflattering to all concerned and yet strangely curious as if they are the Other rather than us under different circumstances. Obviously a film that features only two central characters will rise or fall based upon the success of those two characters as actors; whether or not they can draw the audience into their lives and whether they can create enough drama in their interaction to sustain believability over the course of the script. In my opinion they succeeded on both accounts extremely well. I thought Weaving's portrayal of a guy caught between the mistakes of his past and the hopelessness of his present was unusual and unusually poignant. I can hear people laughing and saying that the formula has been rehashed so many times that it is trite. My answer to that comment is that I have not seen it done so well. Weaving portrayed a guy on a knife edge, caught between a past that will not let him forget and a future that has no place for him.

How many of "hims" are out there? Do we as a society have a responsibility? What went wrong? Was the script over dramatised? Did Weaving play his character too wildly, too dramatically? I do not think so. I also thought Tom Russell was brilliant. I thought that his character morphed between the extremes demanded of him in the script very well. Diane knows children his age far better than I and her comment was kids do not spring back and forth between absolutes as Russell's character did but to me I found his morphing as real as his dad's. Under those extreme circumstances I could understand the motivations of both central characters. A difficult film but one that should be seen to see what film can do.

Last Ride is well made and well acted. The cinematography is a treat.

Unfortunately the script lets the film down. The central character (played by Hugo Weaving) is just a bit too unappealing, just a bit too hard to relate to, just a bit too hard to empathise with, just a bit too selfish.

In a way the film could be compared to Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World. Both are stories about the last ride of father and son figures. But where in A Perfect World I felt sympathy for the fate of Kevin Costner's father figure, in Last Ride Hugo Weaving's father ultimately left me repelled. For me the film suffered for that and, for me, the fault was with the script.

Hugo Weaving is really the main reason to check this film out as he completely anchors everything about it. Movie is about this father and son who as the movie goes on we find out are on the run from the cops and we find out why and what the exact nature of their relationship is--and that's actually one of the nice mysteries of the film. We never quite know at least until the end exactly what the level of relationship is between this father and son team---do they love each other? detest each other? does one have wildly different feelings about the other then the other does about them? it's very much to the movie's credit that we really cannot take it for granted that the son either loves or hates his dad and ditto the dad to his son. The film does a very good job conveying that complexity of their established relationship.

Unfortunately once you get past the father and son stuff--there's not really a whole lot else to the movie content wise---its the two of them on the lam kind of, and the two of them alternatively bickering (sometimes viciously so) and bonding (sometimes very sweetly so) the only thing that keeps the movie from getting repetitive tho is the 2 performances--again Weaving just anchors the movie with his glowering yet oddly somewhat sympathetic character and the kid who plays his son Chook is equally as good at going back and fourth between wanting nothing more then to escape his dad and loving him with all his heart.

There's also a very compelling visual element to the film that helps the film move along in its somewhat lumbering middle section nicely enough. There's a scene where it literally looks like Weaving is driving his car in the middle of a lake--its not quite what it looks like--and i'm sure people in Australia will understand immediately what the car is driving on--but I had no idea why it looked like the car was driving on water! About the lumbering middle section--I suppose the reason its like that is because the film is more concerned with trying to be somewhat realistic and playing up the realism of the situation between the father and the son rather then playing up the drama of them being on the lam--and it works very much in the film's favor as you get to care about the two of them and what's gonna happen largely because of this. Unfortunately it also has the effect of making the film seem somewhat slower then it should be, but you know this is a small intimate father and son movie and that's probably the way the pace should be.

One quick thing about that ending---when it was over a number of the people i was in the theater with were grumbling about why it had to be that way--but the movie absolutely has the right ending--in fact you could say it has the only ending the movie could have and still feel true to itself. It was a pretty good movie overall but definitely a hard one to cuddle up to! (and Hugo Weaving's character shouldn't have it any other way.)

I'm loving Australian cinema at the moment. It's showing a side of Australia we never see after years of Crocodile Dundee and Steve Irwin. I loved Kenny and loved Beautiful Kate even more. While I don't think it's quite in the same league as the latter, it's still yet another movie which shows the beauty of Australia's great outdoors.

But despite its visual warmth, the backbone of the movie is its dark story. It reveals itself gradually through-out the plot. You will hate Kev (the father), but there will come a point where you will actually come to accept him. Weaving is, as to be expected, solid and his co-star Tom Russell (Chook, the son) looks set to have a great future in the business.

It's a very good movie that you should check out if you get the chance. 8/10