
In 1991, the famous Garth Brooks sang, “Well, it’s bulls and blood It’s the dust and mud It’s the roar of a Sunday crowd It’s the white in the knuckles The gold in the buckle He’ll win the next go-’round.” I couldn’t help but remember the words of the song as I listened to the lyrics about a man giving everything to the rodeo time and again as I watched the opening shot of the feature film called, “Ride,” which has a screenplay, direction, and features Jake Allyn in his debut film. As the camera tracks a scruffy old cowboy through the bowels of a stadium and then out into the sunlight across the rodeo ground, it’s as if the song just came on the airwaves. I could feel the crowd’s energy. I could taste dirt and dust in the air. I could even taste blood and feel pain.
Allyn plays Peter who has just been released from prison after serving four years for vehicular manslaughter. The character of Peter is an addict of alcohol, opioids, and rodeo. It is his lifestyle that led to the incident that killed someone and also his baby sister, Virginia (Zia Carlock). Allyn is picked up from jail by his grandfather Al (Forrie J. Smith) who used to be a rodeo rider but is now a preacher, Peter has a problematic relationship with his parents, John (the always stellar C. Thomas Howell) a NFT rodeo champion, rancher and agricultural teacher, and Monica (Annabeth Gish) a sheriff of the area. Parents are angry at their son but Peter’s actions also led Virginia to cancer being discovered far much earlier than expected.
When Peter arrives in town which is known as the Cowboy Capital of the World the cancer that Virginia has goes back to phase 1, and the family has already spent their insurance and needs to raise $40K before the aggressive treatment can begin. Shortly thereafter, an alexia-free Peter leaps off a bull thinking that the profits will help win back the family to have even more problems. During this time John is left with no choice but to sell most of his possessions and entertains the thoughts of crazy ideas to get the cash.
The strain pushes them both towards shady drug dealer Tyler (Patrick Murney, a livewire) who is quite happy to hot iron brand someone one minute or tip a hat and say “ma’am” the next.
Although crime and melodrama elements go through the film, they are of secondary importance and do not stand in the foreground. First of all, “Ride” is a documentary, a documentary about Peter, John, and people like them, and their place in the world today, focusing, however, on the search for the place. What is the reason why so many times a family that consists of two working adults, still has to make sacrifices, neglecting life-saving cancer therapy to their only child? How can any person deal with that kind of reality? For John, Peter, and Al, the broken relationship with the rodeo is managed within life’s parameters. Towards the ending scene, Peter reveals to the audience, “When I am bull riding and that shoot opens when the cowboy opens, all my ache, all that empty feeling, just goes away. For eight seconds, it is just smack, all I have to do is hold on.” Yes, even though bull riders confront many uncertain challenges, for someone like Peter, it is realistic, it is available even every once in a while, a goal that is of ulterior interest.
Few understand that Allyn, like his actors C. Thomas Howell and Forrie J. Smith grew up with bull riding and rodeo.
This reality is obvious from the way he walks like a long-legged freak and of course from the elaborate world-building of his movie. Allyn brings this realm of rodeos alive with the sounds of clanking metal gates, screaming fans of country music, and visually striking icons. Here’s an entire country bathed in the idealistic tints of red, blue, and white fireworks and the blaring brightness of a floodlight. A derriere of bulls named Tempest and Twister in the presence of rodeo clowns in all their grotesque splendor; the good ole boys in ten-gallon hats and the rodeo queens with their hair tall and sweet. Together with this parade of kitsch and the words of the script co-authored by Allyn and Josh Plasse and the director’s work with his actors remind about sincere and intimate things.
Before I put the film on, I had already read Louise Brooks’ memoir where she recalls G.W. Pabst stating that every great director ‘holds the camera on the actors’ eyes in every important scene long enough for them to see it in their eyes.’ She writes that every great director Pabst once told her that an audience must see it in the actors’ eyes. Afterward, Morton Evans recalls Allyn, now a director, but who is obviously an actor first. In one of the most painful and traumatic moments of the movie, without moving the camera he always shoots C. Thomas Howell’s face as John receives very bad news his daughter is diagnosed with cancer. First, he focuses on his daughter, who is a picture of serenity, asleep at the hospital. Then he looks to the doctor, who cheerfully explains that there happens to be a “technically” place at an expensive oncology hospital for the girl which sounds more like a screeching drill than a friendly voice. Everything is in his eyes. He panics about his daughter’s life. The hatred towards modern medicine. The shock of how in the world is he going to afford this new procedure. His eyes contain every single conflict at the same time.
In the second most interesting moment of the film, the audience will find Peter staring at an Oxy pill that has fallen on the floor of the locker room even after having been brutally beaten with blood oozing around.
Peter has broken his rib and is in terrible pain, however he still has a single bull left to ride. He hears Al who tells him to “cowboy up”. Peter glances at the pill and we realize that the game is never over for him, just like riding bulls, we call it life and it is an endless contest. Peter is depicted by Allyn as being a ghost-possessed man. Ghosts such as the one of the lady he unwittingly assuaged. Ghosts of his family that cut ties with him. ghosts of a man that he used to be. These ghosts are firmly rooted in him as he is always scowling and there seems to be no frown. He is a lanky man and that lanky body does not suit anywhere.
“Ride” works best when the focus does not drift from the family issues at the center of the film, which are Peters, Johns, and Als; three bull-ropers from different generations whose relations are set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing world. Peter seeks solace through his vices in order for the family to become more of what the bull-making legends encouraged. For John, accepting help to pay for his daughter’s medical treatment would be tantamount to begging, and as a man, he cannot stand dishonor. For this head of the household, the cross-border chaos includes and is limited to Al who pushes them both to the edge through extremities of ruggedness and prayers.
These men can’t be condemned by the film, nor are they glorified. Allyn, on the other hand, lets the members of the world decide for themselves.
However, some of the film’s characters do not seem to be as gratefully incorporated into the social tapestry as they might have been. Sheriff Monica however is the least featured though a scene where she pours hot coffee on her fingers gives an image of how tumultuous her character is and the third act twists gives Gish an opportunity to operate in the same morally ambiguous world as the boys. I did appreciate the segments that involved Noah (Josh Plasse), the other sibling of Peter, and Libby (Laci Kaye Booth), the girlfriend of Peter that add some color and details to the setting of Stephenville and its common dwellers, but I almost wish that we could have had more of Peter’s younger sister Virginia.
“Ride” is a film pregnant with themes, ideas, characters, and plots. however, it succeeds because it is the kind of film a director with important things to say and a film that should have been made yesterday is always waiting to make.
This film makes sense in the context of the modern American West, a region that is full of diversity and conflict, trying to hold on to a way of life even when the tides of time begin to erode it.
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