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| Island Pictures | Release Date: May 8, 1987 |
Starring:
Crispin Glover, Daniel Roebuck, Dennis Hopper, Ione Skye, Josh Richman, Joshua John Miller, Keanu Reeves, Phillip Brock, Roxana Zal, Tom Bower
Summary:
A high school slacker commits a shocking act and proceeds to let his friends in on the secret. However, the friends' reaction is almost as ambiguous and perplexing as the crime itself.
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River's Edge is a great movie. Based on a true story, the general plot is straightforward - stoner guy kills stoner girlfriend, leaves her body by the river, and brags to all of his stoner buds - but there are darker undercurrents that stir up thoughts about the disillusionment of youth, the devaluation of women, and the death of Sixties idealism. Director Hunter is a whiz at pacing and keeps the plot rolling while he further muddies the waters with his intriguing montages.
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One of the blackest, funniest, most disturbing and annoyingly lingering American films of this or any other year; the
annoyance occasioned by the film's tendency to linger is not because River's Edge is not good, it's because it's too good.[05 June 1987]
Based on a true story, the movie has a hypnotic, documentary like appeal despite outlandish performances by Crispin Glover as the ringleader of the kids and Dennis Hopper as a wacked-out former hippie who offers them shelter. River's Edge is challenging to watch if only because it doesn't lecture. It simply presents these young people as wandering, stoned souls;
shows a few of them grappling with moral responsibility, and allows the rest to fail. As we leave the theater, we can't help but wonder how common their behavior may be.
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This generation's postpunk worldview is rooted in nihilism, detachment, and fear of nuclear annihilation--nothing matters to them except friends, rock 'n' roll, and getting stoned. River's Edge also boasts the best cast of unknowns since Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders. Reeves and Skye are superb as the moral centers of the film, Roebuck is great as the killer, and the supporting performances are also impressive. Glover and Hopper go over the top and get away with it.
For all its uncompromising toughness, the film, like the kids, gets out of hand, its bleak portrait of alienated, antisocial behaviour increasingly wrecked by hysterical performances (Glover especially), a sentimental teen-romance subplot, and melodramatic contrivance. There are some good, frightening scenes of volatile lunacy, but the whole thing badly lacks a controlling distance and perspective; much inferior to Hunter's script for Jonathan Kaplan's superficially similar Over the Edge, it continually teeters on the verge of self-parody.
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