River's Edge (1987)

The Bizarro World Of Teenagers

If it came out today, River's Edge would be dubbed an indie flick, which is what it was, only back in the `80's I'm sure it was called something like "low-budget" because no doubt it was that, too. Indie, low-budget, whatever label you want to stick on this film, it actually delivers a watchable, puzzlingly intriguing plot from a young cast that by and large found later fame. Centering around the days immediately following the reasonless slaying of a teenage girl by her teenaged boyfriend, a killing that took place along a river's edge, this movie feels intellectually alienating, even as it also embroils subconscious instincts and compels a viewer to question what her or his own conduct might be if caught up in the situation presented here. A friend has committed murder, in fact unrepentantly committed murder, so what happens next? To what extent will and can normal life continue? Do you offer your friend help? "Do what is right" and go to the police? Is your friend suddenly someone to be feared? Far from being sensationalized, River's Edge proceeds so calmly downstream toward the inevitable rapids that it reaches something inside of almost everyone, even as it also disgusts, and not only for the crime at its heart, but because of the utter turmoil that exists peripherally and daily in the characters' lives. River's Edge isn't a classic but it is just different enough to stand out from most other movies of the Reagan era. January 28, 2008

Interesting

3.5 stars

Just saw this for the first time. Might have been a big deal 20 years ago, now it seems almost ironic. No one cares anymore about going to war with any country we're told is full of terrorists, so this is kid's stuff.
Keanu is so bad here that it's pretty funny. Glover is so weird that he actually carries this film, I'd say.
This is a topic worth exploring and a decent job of doing just that. Not great but pretty good, and most of the performances are solid, except old Mr. Reeves. My God he's helpless! Always looks cute though so that's why they keep hiring him 20 years later I guess. He seems perpetually confused in almost all of his roles. Type-casting?
Ione Skye was believably annoying, and Keanu's kid brother may have stolen this film if not for Glover's goofiness.
Worth seeing. December 17, 2007

Back to the eighties

You want acting? Try another movie.

You want hair and clothes from the eighties. Try this one.

This is the high school movie for the not-so-pretty youth. Happy memories of younger days. And the references to Easy Rider are hilarious.
August 23, 2007

A Negative Image of the Good

A quarter of the way through watching River's Edge, I was having trouble putting my finger on the right adjective for the film or the way it was making me feel. "Discomforting/uncomfortable", "appalling/appalled", "disturbing/disturbed" all floated around in my head but were insufficient to describe the sense I had of a horrific...absence of something. I mentioned this to the friend who had been responsible for our movie choice of the evening, and he summed it up: "it's a negative image of the good". That was it. Or to put it in the words that came to mind shortly thereafter, as two degenerate 12-year-olds shoot crabs in a bucket for mild entertainment, "All wrong." Everything--everything--was just all wrong.

At first, this might seem appropriate, even inevitable, given the film's subject matter. River's Edge begins with a dead body; Samson, a high school Neanderthal pothead played convincingly by Daniel Roebuck, has killed a female classmate of his--for essentially no reason--and then tells his friends about the crime. The rest of the film follows the aftermath as hyperbolic Layne (Crispin Glover) makes it his (and their) mission to protect Samson, while Matt (Keanu Reves) and Clarissa (Ione Skye Leitch) act indecisively on a vague discomfort with this course of action.

But few films dealing with murder intentionally omit any internal viewpoint of morality or justice in the way that River's Edge does, and this is what makes it compelling and thought-provoking as well as deeply unsettling. On the back of the box, Matt is described as "struggling with guilt" over the decision not to turn Samson in, and indeed he does go to the police fairly early in the plot. Ah-ha, you might say, here is our standard of judgment. But numerous clues throughout undermine Matt's claim to moral objectivity, any strong sense of rightness that could shed light on the other characters' nihilistic apathy and dissoluteness.

Indeed the lack of deep feeling is a running theme throughout the film. Several of the adults accuse the kids of the crime of apathy--and yet we and they are presented with no appropriate example of feeling, no appropriate object for it. Clarissa's high school teacher idealizes the accomplishments of his generation ("We stopped a war, man"), Feck--the kids' drug dealer--accuses Samson of not loving the girl he murdered...like Feck had loved the woman he had killed many years ago. Every passion in the film, it seems, is misdirected, whether toward the trivial (more than once is rage expressed over beer) or the perverse. Samson's explanation of his crime--that he did it to "show everyone who's boss", that it made him feel "alive"--is chilling enough to shake the beliefs of the most devout Nietzschean. All in all, an exceptional film and well worth watching. April 4, 2007

a great

i have searched for this movie for years. all of a sudden it hit me that amazon might have it and they did! although it is not a big production it has a great cast. keaneu reeves, dennis hopper and crispin glover all deliver in this. very disturbing flick but it is one of my alltime favorite movies. i will enjoy being able to watch this classic millons of times over. April 3, 2007

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