Today, our hero-lover is not a greased-hair rockabilly cat, but a real cowboy Luke, a rodeo rider who risks his health and life in order to last 8 seconds on the back of an angry bull, proving to everyone that he can, that he is a tough guy and deserves the highest reward in his dangerous business. You might think that The Longest Ride (2015) is another cowboy western melodrama set to country music, but fortunately the first impression can be wrong.
Usually, modern stories about cowboys don’t end well, Mickey Rourke’s last cowboy goes all out, Matthew McConaughey’s skinny redneck turns out to have AIDS, and Ledger and Gyllenhaal’s cowherds indulge in traditional samurai entertainment. But here everything is different, because the main role is played by Scott Eastwood, the son of the cowboy number one! Dad Clint not only does not provide his son with cinematic support “for fraud”, but also puts a spoke in the wheels, calls the producers and tells them not to take him into this or that project. Let the pier make its way by itself, if it wants so much. And the guy Scott is in his place right here, with chiseled cheekbones, blue eyes and athletic figure, he looks like his father.
Ryan Adams – Desire
Girl-Next-Door Sofia (Britt Robertson) is a Slavic girl, possibly a Polish, an art college student, who agreed to her friends’ persuasions to go to the rodeo and watch the brave cowboys. There she meets our handsome man in the hat. And they have a hot romance on their way, but they’re just too different ones. Luke dreams of returning to the big bull sport and becoming a champion, and Sofia wants to go to a prestigious college in New York, having left her native Texas. Fate brings them together with Ira Levinson, an elderly gentleman in trouble, and Sofia, taking care of the old man, gets closer to him, and then he tells her his story.
A love story in harsh times, about how war cripples human destinies, and what trials he was destined to overcome. Sofia reads Ira his letters from the 1940s about his lover named Ruth (Oona Chaplin, the granddaughter of the great comedian) in absentia. Ira (Jack Huston, do you remember the most tragic soldier from the Broadwalk Empire?) A modest young man, the heir to a family business, a shoe store, one day met a girl, and this meeting changed his life.
This melodrama based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks, the author of romantic novels, on which very high-grossing films were shot, somehow reminded me of the Deuce of Spades. But I can’t compare these two films, both tell simple life stories with two parallels, but for all their apparent simplicity, they are too different.
Also featured in the soundtrack in the genre of indie folk, country and Americana are Hozier, Ryan Adams, Ben & Ellen Harper, Pistol Annies, Middle Brother, Kodaline, Seafret, surprisingly well-chosen music that you will want to listen to after watching the movie.
Middle Brother – Blue Eyes
I won’t spoil it, I’ll say that The Longest Ride movie is really decent, beautifully shot, and it’s nice to look at beautiful people you believe in. Heroes make their mistakes, and in the end they will all be rewarded according to their deeds. Art is eternal, life may end, but love will live in new young hearts. This movie is an excellent choice for a cozy viewing on Valentine’s Day in the company of the closest person.
