Fugitive Kev (Hugo Weaving) snatches his son Chook (Tom Russell) and takes him on a road trip across Australia. Hugo Weaving is rock solid as a violent man on the run. The kid is also great, and able to switch gears along with the story. Their relationship has great chemistry that evolved with all the complexity.The story moves along slowly but also gets punctuated by acts of violence. My only suggestion is that the violence need to be dramatized much better. The camera stands back too much and dissipates some of the power. I'm reminded of Amy Heckerling who said she had no idea how to shoot the football game in 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High'. It seems like Glendyn Ivin didn't know how to shoot the violence, and so she just shot it passively.

Hugo Weaving is really the main reason to check this film out as he completely anchors everything about it. Movie is about this father and son who as the movie goes on we find out are on the run from the cops and we find out why and what the exact nature of their relationship is--and that's actually one of the nice mysteries of the film. We never quite know at least until the end exactly what the level of relationship is between this father and son team---do they love each other? detest each other? does one have wildly different feelings about the other then the other does about them? it's very much to the movie's credit that we really cannot take it for granted that the son either loves or hates his dad and ditto the dad to his son. The film does a very good job conveying that complexity of their established relationship.Unfortunately once you get past the father and son stuff--there's not really a whole lot else to the movie content wise---its the two of them on the lam kind of, and the two of them alternatively bickering (sometimes viciously so) and bonding (sometimes very sweetly so) the only thing that keeps the movie from getting repetitive tho is the 2 performances--again Weaving just anchors the movie with his glowering yet oddly somewhat sympathetic character and the kid who plays his son Chook is equally as good at going back and fourth between wanting nothing more then to escape his dad and loving him with all his heart.There's also a very compelling visual element to the film that helps the film move along in its somewhat lumbering middle section nicely enough. There's a scene where it literally looks like Weaving is driving his car in the middle of a lake--its not quite what it looks like--and i'm sure people in Australia will understand immediately what the car is driving on--but I had no idea why it looked like the car was driving on water! About the lumbering middle section--I suppose the reason its like that is because the film is more concerned with trying to be somewhat realistic and playing up the realism of the situation between the father and the son rather then playing up the drama of them being on the lam--and it works very much in the film's favor as you get to care about the two of them and what's gonna happen largely because of this. Unfortunately it also has the effect of making the film seem somewhat slower then it should be, but you know this is a small intimate father and son movie and that's probably the way the pace should be.One quick thing about that ending---when it was over a number of the people i was in the theater with were grumbling about why it had to be that way--but the movie absolutely has the right ending--in fact you could say it has the only ending the movie could have and still feel true to itself. It was a pretty good movie overall but definitely a hard one to cuddle up to! (and Hugo Weaving's character shouldn't have it any other way.)

Most movies avoid morally flawed and reprehensible central characters, since it's too hard to get audiences to empathise with them. Instead, they go for safe fluffy leads who have a few little problems, but are only misunderstood, and really, they're the sorts of people that we should aspire to be. Boring and yuk.Last Ride does the opposite and pulls it off sensationally well, thanks to an intelligent and balanced script, wonderful direction and a superb performance by Hugo Weaving. Australian cinema has recently been accused of being too bleak and depressing, but anything done well is worthwhile. I still don't understand how such a flawed character was able to hold my attention for so long. An ex-con kidnaps his son and goes on a road trip. That's all I'm telling you. Not an easy film to watch, but oh so worthwhile.

Diane and I saw this engrossing examination of the other side of human existence; a side that as portrayed in Last Ride would probably be unfamiliar, unappealing and unflattering to all concerned and yet strangely curious as if they are the Other rather than us under different circumstances. Obviously a film that features only two central characters will rise or fall based upon the success of those two characters as actors; whether or not they can draw the audience into their lives and whether they can create enough drama in their interaction to sustain believability over the course of the script. In my opinion they succeeded on both accounts extremely well. I thought Weaving's portrayal of a guy caught between the mistakes of his past and the hopelessness of his present was unusual and unusually poignant. I can hear people laughing and saying that the formula has been rehashed so many times that it is trite. My answer to that comment is that I have not seen it done so well. Weaving portrayed a guy on a knife edge, caught between a past that will not let him forget and a future that has no place for him. How many of "hims" are out there? Do we as a society have a responsibility? What went wrong? Was the script over dramatised? Did Weaving play his character too wildly, too dramatically? I do not think so. I also thought Tom Russell was brilliant. I thought that his character morphed between the extremes demanded of him in the script very well. Diane knows children his age far better than I and her comment was kids do not spring back and forth between absolutes as Russell's character did but to me I found his morphing as real as his dad's. Under those extreme circumstances I could understand the motivations of both central characters. A difficult film but one that should be seen to see what film can do.