Should you’re going to set your film someplace within the intersection of two worlds fraught with hazard — say, bull-riding competitions and hardcore crime — it’s at all times a good suggestion to forged actors who look and sound snug, and credible, in each locations. There are fairly just a few issues to admire in “Ride,” director Jake Allyn’s suspenseful drama a few rodeo household pushed to extremes whereas attempting to pay their younger daughter’s medical payments. However the very first thing that stands proud is how a lot verisimilitude lead gamers C. Thomas Howell and Forrie J. Smith deliver to the desk. Should you take a look at their backgrounds, that shouldn’t come as a shock.
Howell should be finest remembered by followers for his roles in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders” — “Look! It’s Ponyboy!” — and John Milius’ “Pink Daybreak.” However along with the scads of different film and TV credit on his resume, together with various the place he performed a complete badass, he additionally has a powerful background in real-life driving and roping that stretches again to earlier than his display screen debut. Simply as essential, he’s 57 now, an age the place he can simply challenge virtually as a lot craggy gravitas — virtually — as Smith, who spent a long time wrangling on the rodeo circuit earlier than his detour into movie and tv introduced him to “Yellowstone,” a collection that has been recognized to deal with extremely unlawful actions on the frontier.
Each actors give career-highlight performances in “Journey.” Allyn’s movie is well-crafted sufficient to engross even individuals who don’t know the distinction between barrelmen and bulldoggers, largely as a result of Howell and Smith are surrounded by an exceptionally well-cast ensemble that embrace Annabeth Gish, Scott Reeves, Patrick Murney — and Allyn himself.
The filmmaker performs Peter Hawkins, the black sheep of a Texas rodeo clan who’s newly launched from jail after serving time for a criminal offense that’s solely steadily revealed. He’s distressingly keen to attain medicine from Tyler (Murney), his long-time vendor, so he can return to bull-riding. Since he’s strapped for money — he’s an ex-con, keep in mind? — he even guarantees to repay Tyler along with his rodeo winnings. Because it seems, Peter scores an enormous payday for his first time again within the chute. However, after all, his issues don’t finish there.
Whereas doing time, Peter has been saved in the dead of night concerning the situation of his younger sister, Virginia (Zia Carlock), who’s combating most cancers. Neither his father, John (Howell), a rancher and retired rodeo star, nor his mom, Monica (Gish), who simply occurs to be the native sheriff, ever visited him in jail — and never completely as a result of they’ve been attending to their ailing daughter. Peter’s grizzled grandfather, Al (Smith), did drop by sporadically, seemingly as not as a result of the previous rodeo champ now could be a minster catering to substance abusers. However it comes as a bolt from the blue for Peter when he learns Virginia requires a massively costly, experimental therapy — one which isn’t lined by his estranged dad and mom’ insurance coverage insurance policies.
Hoping to assist Virginia — and get again within the good graces of everybody else in his household, together with his youthful, non-rodeoing brother Noah (co-scripter John Plasse) — Peter ropes his father right into a scheme to grab stacks of money hidden in Tyler’s squalid residence. Nothing good comes of this.
Nicely, an modification: The harrowingly sustained sequence depicting the dire issues that come up when Tyler returns residence unexpectedly, and expresses his displeasure nonverbally, isn’t simply good — it’s masterful. Possibly it might be overstating the case to name it Hitchcockian, however not by all that a lot.
Allyn continues to deftly ratchet up the strain, as John and Peter scramble to cowl their tracks, whilst Monica investigates the aftermath of the ill-fated theft with somewhat assist from her deputy, Ross Dickons (Reeves). As “Journey” proceeds, there’s a satisfying abundance of unveiling character touches — each time Gish pulls her hair again earlier than donning Monica’s sheriff hat, you know this lady means enterprise — together with a vividly persuasive evocation of small-town life out and in of the rodeo enviornment. The bull-riding scenes are aptly gritty, dusty and typically scarily convincing. However the interactions among the many principal characters — and, for that matter, the bit gamers, together with those that won’t ever forgive Peter for his sins — ring each bit as true.
Many viewers — too many, in all probability — will expertise discomforting shocks of recognition as Allyn focuses on methods our nation’s flawed healthcare system can humiliate and bankrupt households. (It’s virtually too painful to look at as Howell’s John frantically tries to make some type of down fee at a most cancers clinic.) On one hand, there’s one thing ineffably shifting about the way in which Smith’s Al evokes others with blunt-spoken accounts of his personal addictions, and inspiring phrases about the potential for redemption. “Journey” just isn’t, strictly talking, a faith-based film. In the end, nevertheless, it comes throughout as extra sincere and affecting than a great deal of different movies bearing that label.
