Last Ride

A young boy travels across Australia with his father, who's wanted by the law for committing a violent crime.

Director:

Glendyn Ivin

Writers:

Mac Gudgeon (screenplay), Denise Young (novel)

Stars:

Hugo Weaving, Tom Russell, Anita Hegh

 

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User Reviews

 

An examination of the other side.

26 August 2009 | by Tim Johnson (Fremantle, Australia) – See all my reviews

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.