Absolutely the worst movie.

The movie is wildly uneven but lively and timely - in its own surreal way

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

This was quite an entertaining movie that I will definitely watch again when I just want to relax and see a 1950's period thought provoking movie based loosely on the last few days of the great(est) country singer Hank Williams. Most documented accounts of Hank Williams show him as a great musical talent with a rebellious streak and often in an inebriated state. The Last Ride portrays Hank Williams as a very sickly and anemic but valuable musical commodity that needs to be chauffeured to his next music gig. Assigned the task of getting Hank (whose alias whilst travelling is Mr. Wells) to his next concert venue is a young man named Silas played by Jesse James. Silas however has no clue that he is going to be the chauffeur for the great Hank Williams because he has lived a very sheltered life through his early teens without access to any media including even a transistor radio.Negotiating by telephone with Hank Williams' road manager named O'Keefe played by the seasoned and competent actor Fred Dalton Thomas, Silas tries his darnedest to keep alias Mr. Wells/Hank Williams on the straight and narrow but Mr. Williams notoriety precedes himself and he continues to drink, dance and fight along their road trip.Silas also gets temporarily distracted by a cute gas station attendant named Wanda played by TV's Big Bang star Kaley Cuoco. Silas tries not to let his heart interfere with his current custodial and driving duties for Mr Williams, but Hank tells Silas that he can survive in a country bar for a few hours without him and Hank advises Silas to take the car and one of Hanks' crisp $100 bills and go out on a date with the young gas attendant and cutie-patootie Wanda, and live life for a few hours and feel true love.Gradually the bond between Hank and Silas grows, and the movies theme of a music legends star fading slowly, and a young teen who has not experienced life before meeting Mr Williams getting brighter each day intertwine. This is by no means a movie epic, but a simple heart warming look in to the last few days of music legend and rebel rouser Hank Williams as he comes to realize as he reflects on his unfulfilled life without any true friends.....except maybe, just maybe, his last chauffeur Silas, assigned to taking his new friend and confidant, Mr Williams for his last ride.

Don't go for the music. This is not "Walk the Line", "Coal Miners Daughter" or "The Buddy Holley Story".I saw this film at it's Montana premier here in Bozeman. I'm not sure whether to call this a "buddy/road trip movie" or a "coming of age" story. The fact that Hank Williams is the mystery passenger is almost irrelevant to the relationship that builds between the two main characters. One can be spoiled by the sophistication of today's blockbuster special effects. The simple rendering of snowfall and other "throw-back" effects reveals this as definitely a low budget movie. And even though both the writing and the acting are a bit stilted, there is an endearing sweetness about "The Last Ride" It is worth seeing.

Harry Thomason's The Last Ride made me very self and health conscious.My mind wondered throughout most of its' transitions about my own health, as the driver Silas - played by Henry Thomas - throughout most of the ride there, gradually became less and less of a chronic cigarette smoker as a result of seeing his mysterious passenger in the backseat slowly coughing and struggling to death more and more for fresh air, a pack of smokes, or newer bottles of alcohol.By the time they get to the last gas station, before The Last Ride's ultimate climax, I think Silas, unnoticeably quits smoking, before a girl at the pump tells him he is this gas stations last customer. The owner of it died last year of a black lung so this is the gas stations last night of being open for business.The Last Ride starring – that's right – Jesse James as Hank Williams is about Hank Williams' last ride out, to a show somewhere in West Virginia. Two things I considered high brow about The Last Ride are as follows. One thing was The Last Ride, wasn't nearly as autobiographical as you could imagine any movie about a legendary country singer like, say Ray Charles, or Johnny Cash being, as much as it was more so about his last ride, in a literal sense, out to some gig he had in a random place and the relationship he developed with the young man, Silas, employed to get him out there safely.Williams was an alcoholic and chronic cigarette smoker too so it was the drivers' responsibility to get out there sober, while Silas is already worried about getting him out there alive. Another thing was how obvious Thomason didn't make the identity of Williams as a legendary country singer. I had to get out my laptop for research on the last ride to figure out who the mysterious passenger was because I don't think they ever tell you throughout this picture.Altogether I would say the last ride is about Hank William's posthumous fame.Silas doesn't listen to the radio so all he knows about his mysterious passenger the whole way there is that he is an alcoholic musician that carries a gun and won't stop being incredibly mean to him, while scolding him all of the time for calling him sir. But the funnier thing about that is Williams won't give Silas any other name to refer to him as.I think Silas learns of his passenger's traveling name by accident through a long distance phone call he has with an employer who is supposedly his employer, played by some guy whose been a senator for Tennessee for a couple of years and he didn't even mean to give Silas that information. Silas wasn't even supposed to have this guy's number because he is not in fact who originally hired this driver. It's just a weird movie, whose overall story structure run on a lot of obscure Lynchian fuel that you may have seen in either Lost Highway or Refn' latest nominated Drive, starring Ryan Gosling.The aesthetic liberties taken with the mechanics of The Last Ride's story structure is what I think makes up for all that it lacks in cinematography. You can tell they had a budget during the filming of The Last Ride. Altogether in retrospect I see The Last Ride as a hood classic whose mystery comes from what the film doesn't tell you throughout its' duration, about what is actually taking place.Audiences shouldn't go into the last ride knowing who that mysterious musician alcoholic passenger is. Aside from all of the mystery, movies like that about people with fighting chances that they can't stop blowing are usually touching to general audiences because the premise of them is normally in regards to their last chance and the main character of every movie like that never knows how close he is to that last breath, much like each and every one of us.The conservative nature of The Last Ride's scheme is what I think keeps it from venturing too far into anything sentimental or philosophical so its' a lot more chill and a lot less bias than most autobiographical films usually are.

"The Last Ride" portrays the last days of legendary country western artist Hank Williams who died on New Year's Day in 1952 while traveling to a concert in Canton, Ohio. There is none of the smarmy sentimentality of the 1964 biopic You're Cheatin' Heart starring George Hamilton. Henry Thomas' Williams never sings a line or strums a chord. Instead, we see him staring waxy- eyed from the back seat of his Cadillac as he slowly succumbs to both substance and alcohol abuse and the residual affects of childhood Spinal Bifida. Occasionally he directs a pointed barb toward his newly hired driver who is frantically trying to get his celebrated passenger (the driver never seems to be aware of who his passenger actually is) to the appointed destination. It is this serendipitous pairing and resulting relationship of these two men, one celebrity and the other a ne'er do well, that is the heart, indeed the only real focus, of the film. By fits and turns, what starts as a cold, cold heart towards most of the rest of the world warms to one of a genuine love and respect between two people who can, in the end, truly call each other friends. As far as I know, this film has only shown in Arkansas and Louisiana to date. It deserves a much wider release and more critical review. It is one of the best movies of 2011.