Quentin Tarantino presents Hell Ride Movie Review
*repost from 08/29/2008
Directed by Larry Bishop
Starring: Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper, Vinnie Jones, David Carradine, Larry Bishop and Eric Balfour
Availibility: dvd 10/28/2008
When does an homage go too far? I can just see Larry Bishop sitting at his house writing the script in between watching dvd's of Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs, and on and on, and then he occasionally throws in Rodriguez's Dusk Till Dawn and Desperado. It's pretty pathetic how much he is influenced by those guys. The musical cues, the camera angles, the flashbacks and the dialogue are all very heavily influenced by Tarantino. That wouldnt be bad except the dialogue is piss poor and most of the performances are hammy.
The movie follows three biker buddies: Comanche(Eric Balfour), The Gent (Madsen) and Pistolero (Larry Bishop) and their biker gang the Victors, as they start to get killed one by one. It flashes back 32 years and you see that their rival gang the 666 ers killed Pistolero's woman, who is also Comanche's mom, and steals a key to a hidden lock box that is suppose to have some valuable treasure. Vinnie Jones play the main villain of the current 666'ers, whom carries around and kills people with a harpoon gun. The Victors come up with a plan to get revenge on the 666'ers and the mastermind of the gang, David Carradine.
Sound cool right? Well it could have been except the action was lacking, the dialogue pathetic and the conclusion was anti-climatic. The sudden quick ending is very Kill Bill 2ish except for it worked for Kill Bill because you cared for the characters and the dialogue was actually interesting. In this movie it totally pisses you off. Also the secret lock box, which we are never shown the contents is a complete rip off of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.
I cant totally trash it because there were a lot of positives I did like. The movie production was slick and edited pretty well. Dennis Hopper had a cool little role that I enjoyed. And by far the best thing of the movies was all the hotties! It had a lot more nudity then what I was expecting. There were a bunch of smoking hot chicks either topless or completely nude. Even with that I still cant recommend this movie, even though for some strange reason Im glad I watched it. So to sum up Larry Bishop should have just given the script to Tarantino, had him revise it, have him direct it and maybe then it would have been cool. I havent seen very many biker movies but I wouldnt be surprised if Larry ripped them off also. On a scale of 1-10 I give this a pissing on Dennis Hopper boots, 4.5 out of 10.


Trailer