A look in Ride or Die

Ever heard the Dixie Chick's song, Good bye Earl? Now have you ever imagined it been played out on screen as a film? This scenario is somewhat pertaining to my movie review for today. The Japanese Netflix drama Ride or Die follows two women whose stories converge after a fateful decision. Rai helps the woman she's been in love with for years escape her abusive husband. While on the run, their feelings for each other catch fire.

The movie opens with a long, continuous shot. It's immersive and works well because it sets the pace for the film, which is patient. I like that they continue this practice through a lot of the film.

They don't use it as an opening gimmick, but instead it's an artistic choice to draw us into the narrative. Some of the long takes, though, while beautifully shot, make us feel a bit removed from the story. The camera is quite a bit away from the action, making us detached observers. This isn't always the case, though. There are a couple of, shall we say, very intimate and raw scenes where we are put extremely close to the characters. We're not distant observers, but right there in the mix.

Rai and Nene have a very complicated relationship. It's tumultuous and changes moods in an instant. Their relationship and feelings are very intense, which sometimes comes across more as melodramatic than compelling.

At the very beginning, some of the timings threw me off, too. I didn't grasp when an event was happening on the timeline, but after a short bit I understood rather quickly, and then the rest of the film was pretty easy to follow. So this is first and foremost a relationship drama and then sort of a romance.

There are intense feelings that Rai has for Nene. These aren't hidden, either. Rai is very forthright about how she feels, but there's a lot of conflict when it comes to what Nene feels for Rai. This causes their dynamic to be emotionally charged and even a bit volatile at times.

I found myself frustrated several times, too, because of the instability of how feelings and thoughts were being portrayed between the two. There was this dance being performed between them. I don't really mean literally, but with words and emotions. They'd rush together and then be yanked apart willfully through their actions. In some ways it does ring true of a highly charged relationship with extreme highs and lows, but this is in a very compressed timeline, making it feel a little more forced or unnatural in how things play out.

There also seems to be some emotional manipulation going on that adds to the frustration of watching this friendship. But I say all that and then think of the circumstances in which our two characters are traveling, and so the heightened emotional states could be very realistic, as well as their reactions to each other at any given moment.

Another compounding factor to the dynamic of the relationship is we're told there's a huge financial discrepancy between how Rai and Nene grew up. One didn't worry about money in the slightest, while the other struggled at every turn. Both of these situations also work to define the characters, obviously, but short of a few lines of dialogue, we're never really let into their pasts. This plays out in small ways throughout the story, which not only causes tension at times, but also is a turning point during a revelation.

Now because of the premise of the story and the setup for Rai's actions, there are some very tough scenes to watch that involve violence and spousal abuse. It's disturbing to say the least, and it is very raw and visceral. We also see the toll that such abuse takes on a body, and it's not easy to see either. I say this because it could be triggering for some. It is brutal to watch, and I wish the camera would have cut away at points so we didn't have to watch it all play out, because it was very obvious what was happening. The use of flashbacks in this story help to round out the narrative.

They give us insight into both the characters, which helps to define their motivations and mindsets. They've known each other for quite a while, and their current up-and-down feeling to the relationship mirrors their past. It's never been simple, but instead almost always complicated.

Some actions of Rai towards the latter half of the film felt out of place to me. She does some things while at a train station that seem out of character and are for reasons that are even more vague. I struggled to figure out why a particular scene took place. To me, it only added extra time that wasn't needed.

So some of the storytelling is a bit messy. I think that mainly comes from the tumultuous nature of the relationship. The time we see Rai and Nene together, minus the flashbacks, is only a couple of days, and there are a lot of emotional upheavals with the characters in that short period of time.

Ultimately, I think the story plays out too long. There are some unnecessary scenes that don't uncover much, but end up adding to this story in ineffective ways.
Plus, those also add to the overall runtime, which for this story didn't need all those minutes to tell.

Just so you know, there is a lot of nudity, a few rather intense and graphic sex scenes, a lot of profanity, and some brutal violence, including sexual and domestic violence. And for my rating , I'm giving it 7.5/10.

Source of imagesIMDB