The Last Ride

"The Last Ride" portrays the last days of legendary country western artist Hank Williams who died on New Year's Day in 1952 while traveling to a concert in Canton, Ohio. There is none of the smarmy sentimentality of the 1964 biopic You're Cheatin' Heart starring George Hamilton. Henry Thomas' Williams never sings a line or strums a chord. Instead, we see him staring waxy- eyed from the back seat of his Cadillac as he slowly succumbs to both substance and alcohol abuse and the residual affects of childhood Spinal Bifida. Occasionally he directs a pointed barb toward his newly hired driver who is frantically trying to get his celebrated passenger (the driver never seems to be aware of who his passenger actually is) to the appointed destination. It is this serendipitous pairing and resulting relationship of these two men, one celebrity and the other a ne'er do well, that is the heart, indeed the only real focus, of the film. By fits and turns, what starts as a cold, cold heart towards most of the rest of the world warms to one of a genuine love and respect between two people who can, in the end, truly call each other friends. As far as I know, this film has only shown in Arkansas and Louisiana to date. It deserves a much wider release and more critical review. It is one of the best movies of 2011.