The Last Ride

When done right some of the best films out there are those dealing with real life people, especially those that have become icons in the entertainment industry. For some reason some get the big budget treatment and others seem to be left to the straight to video or limited run route. The latest is The Last Ride focusing on Hank Williams senior, but takes an interesting direction with the tale, but does it deliver?

The Last Ride follows the end of 1952, with the best years of Hank Williams's career behind him, he hires a local kid to drive him through the Appalachian countryside for a pair of New Year's shows in West Virginia and Ohio. This is one of those films that is a bit hit and miss depending on how you look at it. On one side it is pretty intriguing the direction and time period that they chose to go with to tell this story of Hank Williams. While entertaining it is almost a bit of a letdown as this isn't really a Hank Williams story at all, but still is. This film plays more of a character study that relies mostly on the performances and the direction in hopes to tell this story in a way that is different than most of its kind. Through most of the film the lead character has no idea who he is driving around, which in turn makes it engaging waiting for that big reveal moment when he knows, but sadly that point never comes. There is no doubt he realizes, but it isn't played up as much as you might think and will probably be anticipating. On the flip side the performances are all pretty well executed keeping what could have been a slow boring film engaging and worth the time spent. There are some strange choices regarding green screen at times for some driving moments, but also seems to give it an old film feeling that kind of works with the time period.

This isn't a perfect film by any means, but is interesting on a few levels. The choice of what time they chose to make the focal point and lack of ever using any of him performing in the movie or even the soundtrack makes it a big risk but does manage to payoff. The overall film plays out more like a well-made TV movie, but these days is not necessarily a bad thing. Filled with a great cast and easily one of Henry Thomas' best performances in some time The Last Ride manages to keep your attention and take you on a trip worth riding along for, especially for those that are fans of Williams. Just know going into this film it is not the story of Williams struggle in the music industry, but his struggles in life when it was probably time to hang up his hat.

This was quite an entertaining movie that I will definitely watch again when I just want to relax and see a 1950's period thought provoking movie based loosely on the last few days of the great(est) country singer Hank Williams. Most documented accounts of Hank Williams show him as a great musical talent with a rebellious streak and often in an inebriated state.

The Last Ride portrays Hank Williams as a very sickly and anemic but valuable musical commodity that needs to be chauffeured to his next music gig. Assigned the task of getting Hank (whose alias whilst travelling is Mr. Wells) to his next concert venue is a young man named Silas played by Jesse James. Silas however has no clue that he is going to be the chauffeur for the great Hank Williams because he has lived a very sheltered life through his early teens without access to any media including even a transistor radio.

Negotiating by telephone with Hank Williams' road manager named O'Keefe played by the seasoned and competent actor Fred Dalton Thomas, Silas tries his darnedest to keep alias Mr. Wells/Hank Williams on the straight and narrow but Mr. Williams notoriety precedes himself and he continues to drink, dance and fight along their road trip.

Silas also gets temporarily distracted by a cute gas station attendant named Wanda played by TV's Big Bang star Kaley Cuoco. Silas tries not to let his heart interfere with his current custodial and driving duties for Mr Williams, but Hank tells Silas that he can survive in a country bar for a few hours without him and Hank advises Silas to take the car and one of Hanks' crisp $100 bills and go out on a date with the young gas attendant and cutie-patootie Wanda, and live life for a few hours and feel true love.

Gradually the bond between Hank and Silas grows, and the movies theme of a music legends star fading slowly, and a young teen who has not experienced life before meeting Mr Williams getting brighter each day intertwine.

This is by no means a movie epic, but a simple heart warming look in to the last few days of music legend and rebel rouser Hank Williams as he comes to realize as he reflects on his unfulfilled life without any true friends.....except maybe, just maybe, his last chauffeur Silas, assigned to taking his new friend and confidant, Mr Williams for his last ride.

I've never seen "The Car Hank Died In" in Nashville, so I can't tell if it's accurate. But at one point in the film, Hank was extolling it's virtues as a "ElDorado". The first ElDorados were made in 1953. They made 503, a figure widely argued as plus or minus a couple. It's signature wrap around windshield, the first, was still an inexact science, as glass changes when it cools. The bodies were hand built to fit the windshields, and both were slightly unique. Good movie, though. Since I have to write ten lines I will add my appreciation for the curious relationship between Sir Hank and the Driver. I love Hank's music, and a contemporary reported his reading girls' dime novels and explaining that there was where his lyrics came from. Like..."Your Cheatin' Heart Will Tell On You.". Yes Sir, it will.

I am an absolute fan of Hank Williams Sr and have been ever since 1954. But something just does not smell right about this movie....

About 15 years ago there was a made-for-Canadian-TV movie "Hank Williams, The Show He Never Gave" which was a filmed version of a live show, originating in London. The creator of that show/DVD was an inspired Hank Williams fan who knew and understood Hank's great power and he created a movie that still ranks as a gut-level emotional powerhouse. I've seen it 6 times so far.

"Your Cheatin' Heart" was a planned movie at MGM for 10 years before finally being filmed. It did not do Hank justice. Now comes this new one which looks like a cash-in on Hank's memory, and an imitation of an A+ movie already available. Proceed with caution, because a rip-off movie about Hank will surely make you angry.

Hank Williams is the one I cite as my favorite singer, period. I was exposed to the man's beautifully written, elegantly sung music several years ago, mostly from my grandfather - a connoisseur of classic country - and haven't stopped listening since. His songs possess a uniformed honesty and emotional resonance that is greatly lacking in every genre of music today, regardless of what you're a fan of. His music hits the warmest notes along with the coldest notes, turning every song-topic into a ballady, poetic work of incomparable and, for the time, subversive art. He is a singer that, in my opinion, contributed more to a genre in sixteen years than some artists do in a lifetime in the industry.

It would seem that with TimeLife releasing many of Hank Williams' previously unreleased music and interviews and a film even being made on the man that Williams fans are still willing to pay hard-earned money for his work even though he has been dead for decades. I was always sort of mean-spirited to the thought that Johnny Cash could get a brilliantly-made biopic with A-list actors and accolades-galore but the real pioneer, Williams, couldn't so much as get an hour-long TV special about his impact and legacy on a genre.

Well, now he at least has something; a film that details the infamous cross-country trip he took with an ill-prepared soul who wasn't even in store for the mental-strain and time-crunch it would take to get the singer to his shows in the briskest of weather, let alone his death in the backseat of the Cadillac they were driving in. Harry Thomason's The Last Ride proudly boasts its subject as "music's original bad boy" but gives him a film about as tame as a house-cat. This is a tired, by-the-numbers biopic that does little to emphasize the true beauty of Williams' as an artist and makes the young twenty-nine year old seem nothing more than a bitter codger whose achievements and accomplishments as nothing but accidental and a footnote in the creation of a huge, cultural genre.

The plot: Silas (Jesse James), a young mechanic, is given the job as Hank Williams' (referred to as either "Luke" from his pen-name "Luke the Drifter" or "Mr. Wells," as directed by his old driver) driver in the late December month so that he can make his shows in West Virginia and Ohio, respectively. He is implored to prevent Williams, er, Wells from drinking and getting too rowdy, but this man, myth, and legend won't listen to some backwoods hillbilly who don't know nothing' about sorrow and woe. They set off in a bright blue Cadillac and attempt something of a mutual understanding.

Williams is portrayed by Henry Thomas, who looks like 25% Hank Williams and 75% Brad Paisley. It's no bother, though, as he shows his competence for low-key material and humble dialog. However, writers Howard Klausner and Dub Cornett gives Thomas not much of a character. They somehow managed to turn Hank Williams, the godfather of country music and outlaw-isms, into a psychotic, shallow lunatic with a small giddiness for adventure and a caricature to house deep-rooted drug and alcohol problems.

This is one of the strangest biopics in recent memory. It focuses on a huge man in one of his worst times with no indication or backstory on how he exactly got to the lows he is currently in, predicates itself off of an event that is interesting for a certain period of time before it becomes redundant, features a soundtrack of country songs not performed by the original artists, and bears only four songs even written by its subject that aren't even performed by him. The Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line at least found an actor who could sing Cash and sing him soulfully and majestically. The Hank Williams biopic barely even lets the subject's name be uttered at an audible level. What kind of loyalty and respect is that when you make a film about a singer but won't go as far as to let the audience hear one song by the man, let the actor portraying him to sing one song by the man, or even let his name be spoken? The southland is seen in a crisp, highly pictorial light, but it's all too much like a postcard, with little depth or interest in what made Williams truly embrace the culture and the atmosphere of it. The south and its norms played a significant part in Williams' songs and so did the topics of love and loss. Such themes are wholly absent here. I iterate the point that if the film began as a traditional biography, from the beginning to end of its subject life, it would be far more stable and less frazzled. Despite focusing on a specific point in the life of Williams, it still feels thin and unexploited.

The fact that it at least has a potency in its southern visuals and solid direction is all well and good, but to what reward? A bigger Hank Williams fan than me I see soul-crushed and deeply hurt at the wasted opportunity here. A person looking simply for a biopic and a lesson on an extremely important musical and cultural figure will likely be letdown because of the film's lack of humanization or narrative depth. The Last Ride clocks in as one of the most disappointing films of the year. No matter how it struggles and strives, it never got out of its dullness alive.

Starring: Henry Thomas, Jesse James, and Fred Dalton Thompson. Directed by: Henry Thomason.