Born to Ride Reviews

Unlike John Sturges's classic THE GREAT ESCAPE, which thrillingly depicted the mass breakout of Allied POWS from a Nazi detention camp, and in the bargain gave Steve McQueen his breakthrough role as a dauntless Yank pilot and ace motorcyclist, BORN TO RIDE is a mildly enjoyable pre-WWII action yarn which retains the former's physical military trappings and rebel lone-rider hero antics. Opening in 1939 at Fort Manning Army Base in Kentucky, local punk mechanic and motorcycle ace Grady (John Stamos) enlists as a corporal to help the commanding officer train his men in the army's switchover from horses to cycles. Immediately his free-spirited habits antagonize his superior, Captain Hassler (John Stockwell), and both men are soon in romantic competition for the C.O.'s daughter Beryl Ann (Teri Polo). The boys call a truce when they and four other soldiers are flown to Spain on a secret mission in which, under cover of a motorcycle race, they rescue a brilliant atomic scientist from deportation to Nazi Germany. Back home, having saved Hassler's life on the mission, Grady and Beryl Ann ride off together into the sunset ... on horseback. When THE GREAT ESCAPE was released in 1963, it propelled Steve McQueen to stardom. Of course, John Stamos, hunky star of the TV sitcom "Full House," is no Steve McQueen; he's barely able to carry this genial vehicle, in which his not-very-exciting biking skills, including a finale daredevil leap onto a moving airplane, are forced to shoulder nothing less than the fate of the atomic bomb. The lightweight, old-fashioned screenplay by Janice Hickey and Michael Pardridge is adequately directed by Graham Baker (IMPULSE, ALIEN NATION), although Frank Pezza's period production design is only vaguely convincing.