The Last Rides

When a drug deal involving a motorcycle gang known as "The Slavers" goes bad and money is taken from them one of the gang leaders known as "Johnny" (Erik Estrada) is sent to get it back. In the process he kills a corrupt undercover cop who was involved in the drug trade. Knowing that the police will be after him and not wanting to tie his gang with the murder Johnny takes off and tries to start a new life as a mechanic for an old friend named "Hammer" (William Smith). Unfortunately, his prints were found at the scene and the equally corrupt DEA agent in charge decides to enact revenge in his own way by convincing the leader of the Slavers that Johnny had snitched on them. This sets off a chain of events which results in tragedy to everybody involved. Anyway, rather than detailing the rest of the story and risk spoiling the film for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this was a decent action movie for the most part. Although there is a short sex scene and some violence along the way there really wasn't that much for most people to be concerned about. As a matter of fact, in all likelihood most of this movie could have probably been shown on television with little or no editing. That's how mild it was. But that's just my opinion. In any case, I enjoyed the movie and I rate it as slightly above average.

After his gang The Slavers is ripped off in a drug deal, Johnny (Erik Estrada) tries to make things right but ends up shooting a drug dealer who is also a dirty cop. He leaves L.A. to hideout and stops to see old pal Hammer (William Smith), who is now running a tiny garage in a small California town. Johnny stays on to help as a mechanic and gets his hands full with a recently divorced mother. Before you can yell, "Come back, Shane!" they are hooking up and living together. Of course, trouble is still looking for Johnny in the form of the dirty cop's partner and his old biker gang. I've been trying to fill in my PM Entertainment gaps and it might be rough riding if they are all like this. THE LAST RIDERS never really finds its footing and spends way too much time on the relationship building and not enough on folks getting blow'd up. It is a good looking film though with some nice locations. And Estrada and Smith certainly aren't just collecting a paycheck, which is nice. The highlight is probably Mimi Lesseos beating up some bikers while in a bikini in the film's opening (is this how all drug deals go down?).

This is a great example of how to get the pacing and story of a movie completely wrong. It takes an hour to set up a very simple premise and then we get about 25 minutes of pay off. The bulk of which is done via a montage during a pointless live music scene, from a band who have nothing to do with anything in the movie, and they're used twice to pad out the running time. It actually feels like three movies mashed together. We start with a biker gang doing a drug deal gone wrong, then it morphs into a romance, with the gang member now shopping for groceries. Before finally, we get a rushed revenge of sorts at the end. The story we get is rushed and clumsy, lacking focus and direction. There is so much that needs to be fixed here, you'd end up with a completely different movie if you tried.