TV REVIEW : ‘Ride With the Wind’ a Trip Into Love

Sometimes an unpretentious TV movie comes along that treats sentimental material with such modesty and simplicity that it succeeds beyond its limitations.

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Such a movie is “Ride With the Wind,” about a washed-up, booze-drenched motorcycle racer (Craig T. Nelson) whose life is salvaged by a chance encounter with an ailing little boy and the youth’s single mother (the affecting Helen Shaver).

In fact, that scenario sounds so derivative of a zillion weepy two-hankie movies one hesitates to describe even that much of the plot. But what salvages and distinguishes this story, besides the unstressed direction of Bobby Roth and a low-key teleplay by Harry Grant and Nelson himself, is the shaggy honesty and charm of Nelson’s floundering raceway biker.

Nelson is as real as a gob of mud. From the moment this broken-down, one-time racing idol wakes up in a stupor on a desert plateau, empty beer bottles jangling around him, through his comically rugged, slam-bang sex with a lascivious blond bartender (Linda Dona), Nelson’s burned-out case is an unadorned portrait of physical and emotional bankruptcy.

Nelson’s weary Everyman is most crucially a specific guy whose bonding with the boy and his mom retrieves his life and makes possible his one last race for the Nationals, however hokey that setup is. In real life he would have hung it up and not chanced another crash on his fragile bones, but by then you don’t mind because the movie has earned the right to cheat a little.

And check out Shaver’s nervous laugh as she begins to fall for this big, silent mug with the long hair and honky-tonk past who won’t take no for an answer and has no memory of having ever been in love--until now.

* “Ride With the Wind” airs tonight on ABC at 9 p.m. (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42).