Ride On
**This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Is “Ride On” going to be Jackie Chan’s final run as a stunt-doing performer? The legendary actor is just short of 70, and you get the feeling Larry Yang’s action-comedy is his way of going off into the sunset as the type of actor most of us consider him to be. If you look at what he has coming down the pike, you can see how some of his potential future projects will have him still playing the charismatic stunt performer decades of fans have grown to love, but if this is Chan’s last hurrah as a stunt person, it’s quite a lovely one.
When you’ve been doing the same thing for much of your life, stepping down from the life you know is not easy. It’s frightening and anxiety-inducing. I actually had a similar situation from Chan’s Luo recently in leaving my job of 21+ years, one that provided a lot of stability in tumultuous times. What I transitioned to is a very different type of occupation, but in the same field. For Luo, time has passed him by, as a stuntman who hasn’t been well-remembered. He has a loop of some of his classic stunts that he watches, and they are beloved moments from Chan’s career. Luo’s life is pared down to a village home and his horse, Red Hare. Broke after a terrible accident on a stunt eight years ago, Luo has debt collectors and a horse aficionado looking to take what else of value he has left. When a viral video of him fighting through debt collectors surfaces on social media, though, his career is rejuvenated; it won’t help all of his issues, but it will put him in a better place.
Another key element of this film is Luo’s daughter, Xiaobao (Haocun Liu). He goes to her for legal help, but their relationship has been strained since he and his wife, her mother, got divorced while she was a kid. She is skeptical of him, understandably so, but she enlists her boyfriend to help. This is a touching part of the film, and gives Chan and Liu good material to dig into, but the heart of the film ultimately becomes about Luo and Red Hare. We see flashbacks of their time together, and it’s very impactful to see them get back into stunts together. But if he cares so much about Red Hare, should he push him back into the stunt life as well? That becomes a big part of the film in its second half, and it’s the stuff that really got me emotional in the film. Red Hare is one of the most important characters in the film, and “Ride On” lets us in on his emotions as much as it does Luo’s. They make a great pairing.
“Ride On” hits an awful lot of familiar beats making its way to its ending, wherein Luo finds peace almost begrudgingly, and it has a bit too much fat and repetition in it at 125 minutes, but when the end does hit, and especially when we get that great, patented credits B-roll of stunts gone awry, this was a movie that connected with me hard. I think it’s because it’s about an underdog given another chance in life, and that always lands with me as a viewer. If you’re a Chan fan, or a fan of underdogs, I think this one will work for you.
