The River Wild

1994 "The vacation is over."
6.5| 1h51m| PG-13| en
Details

Gail and Tom Hartman are struggling to stay together and decide to take a white-water rafting holiday adventure in Montana for their son Roarke's 10th birthday, only to meet up with a pair of mysterious men whose desperation grows, turning their vacation into a nightmare.

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Reviews

Protraph Lack of good storyline.
Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
SnoopyStyle Tom Hartman (David Strathairn) cancels on his son birthday once again. Gail (Meryl Streep) takes the kids on the trip by herself. Gail is sure that their marriage is over. She's a former river guide, and takes her son Roarke rafting down to their family home. They meet Wade (Kevin Bacon), and his friend Terry (John C. Reilly) at the river. Then Tom surprises everyone by coming.It would be better if the guys weren't such obvious villains. It could be a better surprise. And the reveal could be done earlier. With the obvious twist coming, the tension isn't really there. It just doesn't have enough intrigue. It is always a matter of tones, and how obvious the clues should be. It would be much better to concentrate on the flirting instead. The biggest problem is that it makes Gail look stupid especially with all her giggling. It is however interesting to see Streep take on something physical and really stretch into unknown territory.
James Hitchcock There is a sub-genre of the romantic comedy known as the "comedy of remarriage". Such films generally deal with a divorced or estranged couple, or a couple whose marriage has been going through a difficult patch, rediscovering their love for one another. They were especially popular in the thirties and forties, but there have been a number of recent examples such as "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Did you Hear about the Morgans?" "The River Wild" can be seen as a "thriller of remarriage". Like "Did you Hear about the Morgans?" it deals with a big-city couple whose marriage is in trouble but who manage to save it while on a trip to a rural part of the American West. The difference between the two films, apart from the fact that the motive for that trip is quite different in each case, is that "Did you Hear about the Morgans?" tells its story in the form of a comedy, "The River Wild" in the form of a serious thriller. Tom and Gail, a middle-class Boston couple, are having marital problems. Gail, a teacher of deaf children, feels that Tom, an architect, spends too much time at work and neglects his family. Gail is originally from Idaho, and decides to take her young children Roarke and Willa on holiday to see her parents, who still live in that state. Gail is also an expert at whitewater rafting, and before her move to Boston worked as a rafting guide on a local river. (The "river wild" of the title; the film-makers may have chosen this unconventional word order to avoid confusion with "Wild River", the 1960 film directed by Elia Kazan). She decides to take Roarke on a holiday rafting trip down the river, Willa (who stays with her grandparents) presumably being too young to come along. At the last minute Tom joins them, and the three set off on their trip together. Near the beginning of their trip, the family meet two other rafters, Wade and Terry. At first the two men appear to be friendly, but Gail slowly becomes suspicious of them, and she and Tom decide to leave them behind. The attempt fails, and Wade pulls a gun on them. It transpires that the two men are criminals who have just committed a robbery and are using the river as a means of escape; they need Gail's rafting skills to get them past the Gauntlet, a particularly dangerous stretch of river. The rest of the film tells of the family's efforts to thwart the robbers and of how their shared danger helps to mend the relationship between Gail and Tom. The film marked something of a new departure for Meryl Streep, previously often seen as a rather serious, cerebral actress. Although she had made occasional ventures into comedy, in films like "She-Devil" and "Death Becomes Her", this was her first appearance as an action heroine. It is not the sort of role which she has reprised since 1994, but she makes the most of it here; she even, apparently, performed most of her own stunts. David Strathairn, more often seen in supporting roles, here achieves leading man status as Tom. There is also a good performance from Kevin Bacon, generally a reliable villain, as Wade, at first friendly and plausible, later a raging psychopath. (John C. Reilly's Terry seems almost likable by comparison). Curtis Hanson is not a particularly prolific director; in a career lasting nearly forty years he has only made fourteen films. Some of those, however, especially in the thriller genre, have been good ones, such as "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" and the excellent neo-noir "L.A. Confidential". "The River Wild" is another example of Hanson at his best, even though there are occasional implausible moments; some of the characters- especially Tom, the bespectacled, nerdish-looking architect- occasionally perform feats of strength or agility more often seen in superhero movies. The basic story- family menaced by violent criminals- may be an over-familiar one, but it is certainly handled in an exciting manner here. Curtis's direction is brilliant; this is one thriller that is genuinely worthy of the name, moving along at a cracking pace. The scenes on the river, especially when Gail is taking the raft down the Gauntlet, are heart-stopping. The cinematography of the beautiful wild scenery of the Pacific North-West is magnificent. "The River Wild" must count as one of the best-made thrillers of the nineties. 8/10
Lee Eisenberg Meryl Streep gets a totally different kind of role in "The River Wild". She and her husband (David Strathairn) and son (Joseph Mazzello, of "Jurassic Park") go on a rafting trip and encounter some guys (Kevin Bacon and John C. Reilly) who turn out to be not what they seem.The obvious similarity is "Deliverance", but I also detected a similarity to "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle", the way that Kevin Bacon's character turns the boy against the mother. I once did a boat trip down the Snake River, and some of the rapids here look like what I remember (although the movie may have exaggerated the rapids).Overall, it's a pretty fun movie. A real jolt of nature, if I may say so. Also starring Benjamin Bratt. Director Curtis Hanson also directed "L.A. Confidential", "Wonder Boys" and "8 Mile".
JoeytheBrit This is a pretty good action adventure which is enhanced by the against-type casting of Meryl Streep as the woman who finds herself held hostage by a couple of robbers on the run while on a rafting family with her near-estranged husband and difficult son.Although Streep is good she is matched by David Strathairn as her city-type husband who initially looks so at odds with the outdoor setting simply by the way he moves - and even sits. He doesn't have any emotional scenes but still manages to superbly transmit his awkwardness with both his surroundings and a wife and son who are slipping away from him. And while Strathairn matches Streep, Bacon surpasses her as the initially charismatic Wade, one of a trio of criminals on the run after robbing a cattle market.The robbers, their numbers reduced by one after a spat, smoothly invite themselves to join the Hartman party and it isn't long before Wade is slyly exploiting the cracks he spies in the relationship between Tom (Strathairn) and his son Roarke (Joseph Mazzello). The film focuses as much on the psychological aspect of the interaction of the four main characters (John C. Reilly as Wade's sidekick is a bystander for the most part) as it does on the action scenes, which is probably why it was more enjoyable than the straightforward action pics Hollywood normally produces. Even the finale is as much about psychological cat-and-mouse games as action set-pieces - which isn't a bad thing in my book.