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THE LAST RIDE - Review Roundup
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1.
On a Past Ride
NOEL HOLSTON
NYNewsday.com
This hot-car caper from executive producer Rob Cohen, director of "The Fast and the Furious" and "XXX," is not half bad if you don't mind a preposterous story or brazen product placement by the telecast's sponsor, Pontiac.
The movie opens with a car chase that looks like something out of the drive- in heyday of "Vanishing Point" and "White Lightning." Ronnie Purnell (Peter Talieri), a self-styled Robin Hood who robs armored cars and gives the loot to anti-Vietnam War activists, is roaring toward the Mexican border in his hopped-up '69 Pontiac GTO, "The Judge." His mortally wounded wife, Kate, and their young son, Aaron, are in the car, and there's a string of highway patrol cars in pursuit. Finally cornered, Ronnie is hauled off in handcuffs, and the time frame advances from 1970 to the present.
Remember, your brain should be idling in neutral for this. "The Last Ride" is the kind of movie you take in because the only sound sweeter to your ears than heavy-metal thunder is the one that a set of steel-belted radials makes squealing through a 180-degree turn.
Full Review Here: http://www.nynewsday.com/entertainment/tv/...manheadlines-tv
2.
'Last Ride' looks like an ad, runs on autopilot
Matthew Gilbert
Boston Globe
The new USA movie "The Last Ride" doesn't represent the latest step in product placement. It heralds a brave new world of "actor placement," in which professionals such as Dennis Hopper and Fred Ward are paid to appear in insidious feature-length ads. Like the waxen models in glossy magazine spreads or the "real-people" audiences in infomercials, the actors in "The Last Ride" are onboard not to perform so much as to lend attitude and allure to the sales pitch.
Basically, "The Last Ride," which premieres tonight at 8, is a two-hour attempt to hip up the Pontiac GTO image for a few generations of men. The movie, which was coproduced by the director of "The Fast and the Furious," Rob Cohen, is all about turning the muscle car into an iconic image of masculinity and freedom. It's a visual collage of car chases and car races, with some uninspiring tough-guy dialogue fitted in between. Not surprisingly, Cohen approached Pontiac with this ad.
Full Review Here
3.
A Gas-Guzzling Revenge Plot Meets Souped-Up Sales Pitch
VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
New York Times
"The Last Ride," which appears tonight on USA, is a brazen commercial for Pontiac that is souped up to look sort of like a car-chase movie. The network has made no pretense about this, hyping its achievement as a "unprecedented integrated marketing opportunity." You can't skip the ads without missing the movie.
Sure enough, gleaming cars with fantastic handling are never far from view, or earshot, as roaring engines and singing brakes dominate the soundtrack. During a scene at a car show, no less, a woman in leather even recites the mantra of Pontiac's new sports car: "Zero to 60 in 5.3 seconds!"
Fortunately, this 84-minute commercial stars Dennis Hopper, looking sheepish but amused, and it is not dreadful. What's more, in so boldly juxtaposing its themes of brand loyalty and blood loyalty, the show turns the corporate cultivation of rebel spirit into a gleeful goof. What? Advertising during a television movie? By a car company claiming to be cool? Lighten up.
So here's the story. Matt Purnell (Chris Carmack), a cop's son and aspiring hood, is also the grandson of a hood, Ronnie Purnell (Mr. Hopper), who was put away in 1970 for robbing banks. Matt and Ronnie team up to avenge Ronnie's arrest.
If it takes a minute to accept that people whose parents were hippies in 1970 are themselves now bald squares — parents of cool kids, not cool kids themselves — it is worth making that adjustment to witness the tender love between today's "O.C."-type pranksters and their rebel heroes from 30 years ago. With his love of fast cars and pit-crew clothes, Matt is a human footnote to Ashton Kutcher; he is so insouciant and cute as to be chided for posturing by his pals. (You can imagine him watching "Easy Rider" and loving it.)
It makes perfect sense, then, that Matt admires Ronnie, whose release from prison kicks off the plot. Mr. Hopper is in fine form. As he has for years, he looks much sadder than, say, Jack Nicholson, as though the mayhem of drugs and bikes really did force on him a lifelong reckoning. Stiff around the shoulders, with mournful eyes, Mr. Hopper is believable as an ex-con.
With the exception of one car chase and one drag race, the first half of the movie is a lecture on its plot. We learn that Ronnie went to jail for an altruistic crime, during which his wife was murdered. His son, Aaron (Will Patton), was left in the custody of sinister security executive Darryl Kurtz (Fred Ward), and became a police detective. Aaron's own son, Matt, quit school to hang out with his girl (Nadine Velazquez), a curvy mechanic with a welding torch, and some bad seeds who hang out and make cars run like greased lightning. If Matt is going to go straight, he is going to have to learn from his jailbird grandpa, who is seeking revenge on the evil Kurtz.
In all this exposition one glaring element of the story is left to speak for itself. That is, of course, the overbearing presence of Pontiacs: new ones, old ones, S.U.V.'s, race cars, luxury cars, Bonnevilles and GTO's. Logos abound, as well as shiny prototypes, and one standout conversation goes like this:
Ronnie: "You kids today don't know how to handle a V8?"
Matt: "Don't need it. This one's got quarter-inch lines, hotshot 421 headers, Tenzo intake and exhaust, and an NX noz system."
Full Review Here
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Last Ride website with sweepstakes
1.
On a Past Ride
NOEL HOLSTON
NYNewsday.com
This hot-car caper from executive producer Rob Cohen, director of "The Fast and the Furious" and "XXX," is not half bad if you don't mind a preposterous story or brazen product placement by the telecast's sponsor, Pontiac.
The movie opens with a car chase that looks like something out of the drive- in heyday of "Vanishing Point" and "White Lightning." Ronnie Purnell (Peter Talieri), a self-styled Robin Hood who robs armored cars and gives the loot to anti-Vietnam War activists, is roaring toward the Mexican border in his hopped-up '69 Pontiac GTO, "The Judge." His mortally wounded wife, Kate, and their young son, Aaron, are in the car, and there's a string of highway patrol cars in pursuit. Finally cornered, Ronnie is hauled off in handcuffs, and the time frame advances from 1970 to the present.
Remember, your brain should be idling in neutral for this. "The Last Ride" is the kind of movie you take in because the only sound sweeter to your ears than heavy-metal thunder is the one that a set of steel-belted radials makes squealing through a 180-degree turn.
Full Review Here: http://www.nynewsday.com/entertainment/tv/...manheadlines-tv
2.
'Last Ride' looks like an ad, runs on autopilot
Matthew Gilbert
Boston Globe
The new USA movie "The Last Ride" doesn't represent the latest step in product placement. It heralds a brave new world of "actor placement," in which professionals such as Dennis Hopper and Fred Ward are paid to appear in insidious feature-length ads. Like the waxen models in glossy magazine spreads or the "real-people" audiences in infomercials, the actors in "The Last Ride" are onboard not to perform so much as to lend attitude and allure to the sales pitch.
Basically, "The Last Ride," which premieres tonight at 8, is a two-hour attempt to hip up the Pontiac GTO image for a few generations of men. The movie, which was coproduced by the director of "The Fast and the Furious," Rob Cohen, is all about turning the muscle car into an iconic image of masculinity and freedom. It's a visual collage of car chases and car races, with some uninspiring tough-guy dialogue fitted in between. Not surprisingly, Cohen approached Pontiac with this ad.
Full Review Here
3.
A Gas-Guzzling Revenge Plot Meets Souped-Up Sales Pitch
VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
New York Times
"The Last Ride," which appears tonight on USA, is a brazen commercial for Pontiac that is souped up to look sort of like a car-chase movie. The network has made no pretense about this, hyping its achievement as a "unprecedented integrated marketing opportunity." You can't skip the ads without missing the movie.
Sure enough, gleaming cars with fantastic handling are never far from view, or earshot, as roaring engines and singing brakes dominate the soundtrack. During a scene at a car show, no less, a woman in leather even recites the mantra of Pontiac's new sports car: "Zero to 60 in 5.3 seconds!"
Fortunately, this 84-minute commercial stars Dennis Hopper, looking sheepish but amused, and it is not dreadful. What's more, in so boldly juxtaposing its themes of brand loyalty and blood loyalty, the show turns the corporate cultivation of rebel spirit into a gleeful goof. What? Advertising during a television movie? By a car company claiming to be cool? Lighten up.
So here's the story. Matt Purnell (Chris Carmack), a cop's son and aspiring hood, is also the grandson of a hood, Ronnie Purnell (Mr. Hopper), who was put away in 1970 for robbing banks. Matt and Ronnie team up to avenge Ronnie's arrest.
If it takes a minute to accept that people whose parents were hippies in 1970 are themselves now bald squares — parents of cool kids, not cool kids themselves — it is worth making that adjustment to witness the tender love between today's "O.C."-type pranksters and their rebel heroes from 30 years ago. With his love of fast cars and pit-crew clothes, Matt is a human footnote to Ashton Kutcher; he is so insouciant and cute as to be chided for posturing by his pals. (You can imagine him watching "Easy Rider" and loving it.)
It makes perfect sense, then, that Matt admires Ronnie, whose release from prison kicks off the plot. Mr. Hopper is in fine form. As he has for years, he looks much sadder than, say, Jack Nicholson, as though the mayhem of drugs and bikes really did force on him a lifelong reckoning. Stiff around the shoulders, with mournful eyes, Mr. Hopper is believable as an ex-con.
With the exception of one car chase and one drag race, the first half of the movie is a lecture on its plot. We learn that Ronnie went to jail for an altruistic crime, during which his wife was murdered. His son, Aaron (Will Patton), was left in the custody of sinister security executive Darryl Kurtz (Fred Ward), and became a police detective. Aaron's own son, Matt, quit school to hang out with his girl (Nadine Velazquez), a curvy mechanic with a welding torch, and some bad seeds who hang out and make cars run like greased lightning. If Matt is going to go straight, he is going to have to learn from his jailbird grandpa, who is seeking revenge on the evil Kurtz.
In all this exposition one glaring element of the story is left to speak for itself. That is, of course, the overbearing presence of Pontiacs: new ones, old ones, S.U.V.'s, race cars, luxury cars, Bonnevilles and GTO's. Logos abound, as well as shiny prototypes, and one standout conversation goes like this:
Ronnie: "You kids today don't know how to handle a V8?"
Matt: "Don't need it. This one's got quarter-inch lines, hotshot 421 headers, Tenzo intake and exhaust, and an NX noz system."
Full Review Here
Last Ride website with sweepstakes
