Ride - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Ride



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:



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Movie
I have a soft spot in my heart for westerns. I grew up watching Clint Eastwood, John Wayne and countless others ride the desert plains since I was six years old and barely able to understand what was going on. But like all genres, their heyday comes to an end, and around the late 80s and early 90s we saw a steady decline in their popularity. Sure, every once in a while we get a slam dunk hit like the remake of True Grit, 3:10 to Yuma or Hell or High Water, but more often than not they just don’t seem to garner much attention from cinema goers. But hey, I’m always willing to give a western a chance, so I did just that with Jake Allyn’s debut attempt to directing his own film (and also happens to write and star in it as well). Results are a bit middling, but it was entertaining enough from this old time western fan.

The film revolves around the Hawkins family down in Texas. Father John Hawkins (legendary actor C. Thomas Howell) is having money problems with his ranch after struggling to change cancer hospitals for his young daughter Virginia. The rodeo business has been his families trade for multiple generations, but riding bulls and doing horse tricks isn’t enough to keep the lights on anymore. Especially when you consider that he’s estranged from his wife Monica (Annabeth Gish), his song Peter (Jake Allyn) is getting out of jail from a 4 year stint for a drunk driving incident years ago, AND he has no way to pay the $160,000 needed for Viginia. All fun and games isn’t it?

Our story takes a multi faceted look at the Hawkins family, and shines a light on each of their troubles. John Hawkins is the most obvious and pressing with his financial woes, but Peter takes second chair as the troubled son come home. He’s a bull rider like his father and his grandfather (Forrie J. Smith), but he’s a years long substance abuser who still lives with the pain he caused when he took someone’s life in that car accident, and struggling to fit in with the rest of society. To make matters worse, Monica Hawkins is the sheriff in town, and while she seems the most put together of the group, she has to deal with the shame of never visiting her own son in jail, and realize that most of the problems she has with her estranged husband is partially on her. Mix in a little bit of crime in order to raise enough funds, a bit of No Country for Old Men style tension, and the film shines a rather bright light on the disturbingly dysfunctional (yet desperate for normalcy) Hawkins family.

While Ride is not what I would call a religious film, it borrows very heavily from Christianity (and almost overtly spells it out during the AA meeting) in terms of resolving the conflicts regarding forgiveness, restitution, and dealing with your inner demons. The story has a fairly slow and heavy pacing, intertwining the 3 Hawkins stories together into one uplifting and redemptive arc. HOWEVER….and I hate to say this, the story plods a bit TOO heavily a lot of the time, and some of the redemptive arcs come across as cloying. The drug addicted criminal who wants to find a way out is a story as old as time, as is the “how can I raise this money for my family member?” one (I mean, that’s straight out of Hell or High Water). Monica’s coming to grips with the fact that she ran from her family is by far the most interesting and realistic of the bun. But the others just have this feeling of cliché driven talking points. But the saving grace is actually Jake Allyn himself. While he’s not a fantastic actor, he has a real handle on showcasing the frustrating lives of struggling people, and they certainly come across as very real and raw most of the time.
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Rating:

Rated R for drug content and some violence




Video:

Like usual, I can’t seem to find any definitive information out there on the web about the cameras used and the resolution of the master, but judging by my eyes and my knowledge of the low budget, I’m going to hazard a guess that this was digitally shot and uses (most likely) a 2K digital intermediate for the master. But of course, if anyone has any definitive information on the tech specs I’d be happy to update this portion of the review. That being said, the end result for the consumer is a solid, if not bleak and “southwest brown” tinged that is so common in these types of films. The cameras shift between daylight soaked scenes with share detail and crisp clarity (such as when John is trying to make his first payment), to dimly lit and grungy looking night time shots filled with amber lights and that slight teal color grading that’s ever popular. These shots tend to show some really diffused contrast as well as weakened black levels and fine detail levels as well. Nothing drastic as much of this is simply stylistic choices, but overall this is simply a “good” looking image.









Audio:

Ride’s 5.1 DTS-HD MA track (with a 2.0 Dolby Digital down mix for night listening) is a solid entry as well, giving us a fairly rousing mix for the rodeo elements, and a fairly neutral front heavy experience for the copious amounts of exposition and dialog that the film offers. Vocals are crisp and clear, with only a few voices muffled behind a Sam Elliot heavy mustache, and the score adds some nice expansiveness to those quieter moments. Bass has some nice punch but is never really the centerpiece of the film, so while it comes and goes, it’s not something that’s going to shake the rafters. All in all, the 5.1 mix is good, but never great. Meticulously done, but never over engineered. Ride is very much a drama at its core, so the simplicity of its mix and the general “good but never great” setup is quite perfectly aligned with this type of film.












Extras: :

• Theatrical Trailer
• Interviews with the Cast

Final Score:
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Ride is an interesting, if not uneasy mixture of multiple genres in a modern western. Kind of like the modern western in general, it has a hard time justifying it’s place in the new world, and justifying why audiences should come see it. The slow paced drama certainly has its high points, but it also is burdened by a heavy pacing structure that makes it hard to really keep interested for the nearly 2 hour run time. Well Go USA’s Blu-ray looks and sounds solid, but the standard mediocre extras and the hit or miss story keeps me from recommending this as anything more than a rental.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: C. Thomas Howell, Annabeth Gish, Jake Allyn, Forrie J. Smith, Josh Plasse
Directed by: Jake Allyn
Written by: Jake Allyn, Josh Plasse
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, English DD 2.0
Subtitles: English SDH, French
Studio: Well Go USA
Rated: R
Runtime: 114 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: August 27th, 2024

Recommendation: Rental