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Featured Actress: Nadine Velasquez - The Fast and the Furious scribe Rob Cohen also co-authored this 2004 made-for-cable-TV gearhead opus, so expect lots of revving and testosterone offset by the snarling old visage of Dennis Hopper. The story finds the grandson (Chris Carmack) of a Bonnie-and-Clyde/Robin Hood duo all grown up and wondering about his grandparents’ past. This is convenient, as his grandpappy (Hopper) is, after thirty years in the clink, just now being set free and is looking for revenge on the man who put him behind bars (veteran actor Fred Ward looking as grizzled as always). The catch here is that Ward raised Hopper’s son (the excellent Will Patton) to be a good, law-enforcing citizen, so he wants nothing to do with his jail-time pops. Alas the law-breaking ways, like many genes, skip a generation and are inherited by Carmack who, along with his gorgeous car mechanic of a girlfriend (Nadine Velazquez), gets embroiled in a rather large scam.
While the dysfunctional family element of the screenplay lends the characters some credence, this shouldn’t be confused as much more than a race-‘em and smash-‘em car movie. There’s plenty of Ford GTO on display here, plus the sharp-looking Mitsubishi that Carmack zooms all over the screen with reckless abandon. Yet with veteran actors like Hopper, Ward and Patton anchoring the story, even non-car nuts will get something out of the flick, as will eye-candy junkies looking for anything that striking Nadine Velazquez has been in. Not many women could pull off welding in a tank-top with a low neckline, but Velazquez.? That’s just the way she rolls.
Equal parts derring-do and automotive exploitation, The Last Ride manages to be very good for a TV movie and about on par with most of Rob Cohen’s canon ball runs.
- Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
- Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
- Studio: Universal Studios
- Run Time: 85 minutes
- Production Company: General Motors, Stu Segall Productions Inc., USA Network Inc.
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