Ride With the Wind

Craig T. Nelson of Coach has come up with a shameless little vanity production in Ride With the Wind . Decked out in long hair and scraggly beard, Nelson puts on a hangdog air as Frank Shelby, a burned-out motorcycle racer. Once a champion, he's now a lonely, lazy boozer who still mumbles about winning one more big race. Then he meets a single woman, played by Helen Shaver, whose young son, Danny (Bradley Pierce), has cancer. Their love compels Frank to pull himself together, and Ride With the Windbecomes just what you feared it would be: a competition to see whether Frank will win his race before Danny dies. Nelson is also the executive producer of Ride, so he should be given some credit for making Shaver's and Pierce's characters look at least as heroically ennobled as his own is, but this TV movie remains a too-predictable heart-tugger. C

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