Last Ride

Last Ride

By Jonathan Fisher, July 5th, 2009


A recurring visual in Glendyn Ivin's Last Ride is of a vehicle hurtling at great speed across a wide, barren landscape. It's a strange effect, as often we can clearly see that the vehicle is travelling very quickly, but seems to hardly be making a dint on the expanse that surrounds it. The same could be said of the characters. Hugo Weaving's character has been running at breakneck pace for a long time, and it shows. Stubbly, weedy and generally unwell-looking, he bears the scars of a man whose entire life has been a fight. His son looks as though he's well on track to follow in the footsteps in his father.

Last Ride tells the story of two people on a painful and long journey that looks like it isn't going anywhere. Weaving plays Kev, a man on the run with his young son Chook (Tom Russell). Kev is a violent, ill-tempered piece of work. He is not a nice man. He is not a good father to Chook. But he is his father, and that is that. Chook has not yet lost the enormous capacity for forgiveness and unconditional trust that children place in adults.

The pair's journey takes them to one of Kev's old girlfriends (Anita Hegh) in a middle-class suburb through the middle of nowhere and eventually into a National Park policed by a ranger played by Kelton Pell. What are they running from? The film's screenplay drops hints before finally dropping the reason on us. When we find out, we care more about the behaviour of Kev during the initial incident than the dramatic twist.

Weaving plays Kev with ferocious honesty. His interpretation does not shy away from the fact that this man is a beast who abuses his son under the guise of 'education'. But there is a different side to Kev, one that occasionally bubbles to the surface. He is capable of real tenderness and kindness towards Chook. There is a complexity in Mac Gudgeon's screenplay, and presumably in Denise Young's original novel, that is difficult to master. The ending of the film is sad, yes, but it is the right ending, built on choices made by both characters that are believable. It accepts the consequences of Kev's actions.

Visually, Last Ride is a masterpiece. Cinematographer Greig Fraser transforms the harsh outback landscape into a living, breathing organism that almost dictates the moves of the film's characters. A sequence of scenes atop a frozen river may well be the best scenes of any Australian movie of the last fourty years. The desolate surroundings and relationship between father and son reminded my obliquely of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, another book (and soon to be movie) about a difficult, complex and harrowing journey across a barren wasteland.

Last Ride joins Samson and Delilah as another film exploring a dark side of human nature in Australia that most don't want to know about. I have no doubt that relationships like the one between Kev and Chook exist in our society. Glendyn Ivin, in his first feature, has managed to look past the easy labels that society bestows upon people like Kev. His debut is deeply powerful, fascinating and, in the end, quite heartbreaking.