GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Ed-Shullivan 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.

Steve Pulaski 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.

Tony Heck "If he don't make it to the show, you don't get paid." Silas (James) is a young mechanic who is looking to make a few extra dollars so he decides to take on a job driving a man named Mr. Wells (Thomas) to a New Year's eve show in West Virginia. The only rules are to get him there in time and not let him drink to much. Neither seems to be an easy task. This is a hard movie to review. The movie is OK, but would be better as a play. The scenes when they are in the car look so fake and is obviously on a sound-stage that its almost distracting. I'm not sure if the William's family was involved in this but the whole movie plays without anyone ever calling him Hank. The soundtrack is OK, and acting could have been worse but the movie just seemed flat all the way through. Overall, a movie that would have been better served as a play. I give it a C+.

etmore-207-103401 "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.