One Last Ride

Story Line: A salesman (Cupo) for a fabric company accrues larger and larger gambling debts while his wife (Barone) is pregnant. The situation gets out of hand when a loan shark (Palminteri) to whom he owes $41,000 offers him a deal: commit a crime or he and his expectant wife will be harmed.

Bottom Line: Laudable for its low-key approach to a very familiar scenario, the 2003 film One Last Ride plays like a large-scale vanity project for Cupo, who also produced and scripted (based on his play). The film has the feel of a theater piece (think David Mamet on a very slow day), with two-character conversations leading to a crisis of conscience that is telegraphed from the very beginning. Cupo and Vitale scored a major coup in obtaining Ang Lee as an executive producer. The cast, meanwhile, breaks down into two distinct groups: Italian-American character actors who "sell" their roles quite well (Joe Marinelli, Mario Roccuzzo) and name performers who do walk-on bits, including comedian Jack Carter as a "garmento" who does business with Cupo's character and Davi as the ghost of his dapper gambler father. Palminteri appears as the most cartoon-like character, the eminently hissable, eye-patch-wearing loan shark (and child pornographer) who has his claws into our gamble-holic hero.