Drifting down Australia’s highways and back roads, Chook (Tom Russell) and his ex-con dad, Kev (The Matrix’s Hugo Weaving), stay one step ahead of the law. Pops, it seems, was involved in an altercation that left a corpse behind. They have only each other, and even that tenuous bond can’t last. Like some long-lost drama from the country’s ’70s New Wave, Glendyn Ivin’s road movie has a knack for turning Aussie landscapes into characters, as well as a slow-burn sense of tension. If Last Ride leans heavily on fugitive-life lyricism, it benefits from an incredible father-son chemistry between Weaving and Russell—one that makes the movie’s inexorable drive toward tragedy that much more gut-wrenching.
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