| Hell Ride | |
 When you look at a film and see names like Quentin Tarantino, Michael Madsen and Dennis Hopper attached it's bound to attract a little interest. A group of experienced actors and a talented director like Tarantino must be able to spot a script with potential, right? You'd think so...But Hell Ride is a poorly devised nod at biker movies of the 60s which, at the same time, indulges writer/director/star Larry Bishop's taste for sexploitation films at every turn. Meanwhile, having hauled Tarantino on board as an executive producer, Bishop seems to want to imitate Tarantino's own pastiche-rich stylings without rhyme or reason. (This inexplicable hero-worship even extended as far as deploying the actors from Kill Bill: Part 2 in scenes that look like pale transplants from the film itself). Do you think he might have been a little too ambitious in taking on so much mimicry and so many roles? I suspect so. And the result is like watching a disabled two-year-old try to bake a cake: you know it's messy, you can see it's not working, but you somehow feel compelled to watch through sheer morbid curiosity. Moving away from dangerously un-PC analogies, it only seems fair that I explain the plot to those of you who still have any interest in this film at all. A bunch of aging bikers want revenge on another bunch of aging for a piece of nastiness that happened over thirty years ago. They therefore take a break from drinking, making lame jokes, and going to strip clubs in order to follow Vinnie Jones around as he fires a crossbow at his foes. The silliness of the premise might have even held up had it been left at that, but the passable (if heavily derivative) violence was unnecessarily interspersed with the most awful dialogue scenes you can imagine. Clearly attempting to revive the witty banter of Tarantino's best outings, it falls short with a series of desperately unfunny lines that would be more at home in playground than on a big screen. Worse still are the 'sexy scenes'. A clumsy obsession with backsides removes any seductiveness from the camerawork, even if it did provide momentary relief from the obnoxious leathery hides which frequented the screen most of the time, and the laughable attempts to recreate explicit sexploitation dialogue resulted in conversations like the bizarre 5 minute scene which sought every feasible way of comparing fucking to firefighting; from the obvious hose analogies to stomach-churning allusions to fire-eating. When all's said and done, about the only positive left with this film is that it's not very long. However, that's a small mercy in a film that has nothing to offer anyone. Avoid at all costs. Film Rating: ZERO EXTRAS Just the trailer. When a film has a host of big names attached you'd think they'd throw on a few interviews just to suck you in. More than that though, many of these people really should've used that opportunity to explain what the hell they were thinking when they agreed to make this trashy piece of pseudo nostalgia. Extras Rating: ZERO Starring: Larry Bishop, Eric Balfour, Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper, Vinnie Jones, Julia Jones, David Carradine Director: Larry Bishop Release date: 12th October (UK) Run time: 83 mins Certificate:UK 18 RRP: £15.99 Review by Michael Edwards If you want sexploitation pastiche, try Viva. Or for films that look like they're made by Quentin Tarantino, try Inglourious Basterds: it's made by Quentin Tarantino. |
