River's Edge (1986)

Too much of everything

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The acting in this movie is really good.

"River's Edge" may be one of the most disturbing and depressing studies in apathy among youth that one will ever see. It certainly sharply contrasts with the kind of thing that filmmakers like John Hughes were doing in the 1980s. It's very well acted (for the most part), stone cold sober, and leaves you with something to think about after it's over.Film director Tim Hunter never got around to making very many movies, but this is far and away the best out of what this viewer has seen. He works from a powerful script by Neal Jimenez, who based the story on an unfortunate real life incident, and used people that he actually knew as inspiration for his characters.In a small town, a teen named Samson (Daniel Roebuck), from a supposedly tight clique, snaps one morning and strangles his girlfriend to death. Apparently unmoved by what he's done, he actually brags to his "friends" and takes them to see the dead body. The other kids likewise don't seem terribly concerned, although somewhere deep inside, you know that some of them have to be affected. The self-appointed, screwy ringleader of the group is Layne (Crispin Glover), who fixates on the idea that they have to be loyal to each other, no matter what, and he insists on trying to cover up for Samson. This, despite the fact that Samson clearly doesn't care one way or the other.It's hard to come away from this one unaffected. These are flawed kids, to be sure, but they're compelling and fascinating in their own sordid way. What doesn't help them is that the adult figures around them are fairly useless, by and large, and the parenting is less than adequate. One interesting exception is Feck (the perfectly cast Dennis Hopper), a drug dealer and former biker, who even in light of his own sordid past, despairs over the lack of values and relatable emotions in these youths.Both Hopper and Roebuck give wonderful, bravura performances, but the entire cast does well. Glover may be just a little too excessively eccentric, but otherwise there's nothing to complain about. Even Keanu Reeves impresses with his sensitive turn as Laynes' buddy Matt. Joshua John Miller ("Near Dark") is unforgettable as Matts' bratty and creepy younger brother Tim. Ione Skye Leitch, Roxana Zal, Phillip Brock, and Josh Richman round out the main cast, with some top character actors like Tom Bower, Leo Rossi, and Jim Metzler (the latter had acted for Hunter in his 1982 film "Tex") filling out supporting roles. Danyi Deats has quite the thankless role, being required to play dead (in the nude, no less) for most of her screen time.There are a selection of ass kicking metal tunes on hand (the soundtrack leans heavily on Slayer), as well as a haunting orchestral score by Jurgen Knieper.Hunters' filmmaking to straightforward and to the point. The material is handled in an appropriately sombre way, without the use of any unnecessary stylistics.Highly recommended.

This movie was a fine unexpected surprise, I wasn't betting too much on it, since I had never heard of it (I stumbled upon the title casually, while watching a Dennis Hopper interview about Blue Velvet), but coming to think of it, why shouldn't anyone bet on it? It's got a great cast and an interesting plot. Unfortunately, I think today it files under the lost gems of the 80's label, but lucky are the ones who can dig it.If you look in the surface, it's a crime story with an interesting outlook on youth, including some (always welcome) weirdness by Crispin Glover and the late Dennis Hopper. But, after reflecting some more about it, it struck me that it's in fact a story about coping with death. We have a group of high school friends who are suddenly put against this insane situation, where one of them kills his girlfriend and starts bragging about it in school. What we see developing on screen afterwards are the effects that this scene, their friend's naked dead body near the river's edge, has on each one of them.After the first reaction, which can't be anything else but shock, each one of them deals with it in a different way, be it keeping quiet about it, telling the police but later regretting it, or even going into a sort of crazy breakdown – which is what Crispin Glover's character goes through, creating a fantasy in his mind that he has to save and help his friend escape no matter what. On the other hand, we have Dennis Hopper's character, Feck, who seems to be the only one who has been in touch with a death situation very similar before, and we can see where it's taken him. He is forced to face a situation like that again and, in his own way, too, will have to learn how to cope with death. Later on, we find out that Feck ended up killing John , because he couldn't accept his reasons for killing his girlfriend, which were different than Feck's, who killed his own because he loved her. The fascinating thing about this scene is that it shows that, the same way people react differently to the death of their loved ones and to death in general, people also kill for different reasons, and those reasons might as well not connect at all.

"River's Edge" (1986) was based on a true story that took place in 1981: a high school student murders his girlfriend and tells his friends at school about it; the group goes to view the body in the woods but they're so apathetic and spiritually bereft that no one informs the authorities and the body just lies there for a couple of days. Daniel Roebuck plays the lumbering murderer and his clueless friends are played by Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover and Ione Skye, amongst others; Dennis Hopper is on hand as an aged biker/hippie. What struck me about the film was how much it reminded me of real life experiences, both as a youth growing up and also as an adult dealing with youths. Here are some of the things in the movie that I've also experienced:Kids as young as 11-13 obsessed with "partying." - The idolization of drugs (pot, pills, etc.) and the party lifestyle above all else. - Kids, that young and older, out all night doing whatever (partying, having sex, crime). - Parents who aren't much more than phantoms in their kid's lives and therefore allow such. - Older, crazy dudes that the youths sometimes hang with, get drugs from or look up to. - The group dynamics of such youths and the unwritten law of not being a "narc." - Killing a friend and leaving the body where it lies for a couple of days.This was (and is) the downside of the 60's revolution -- a somewhat sad emptiness in people who have lost their innate moral compass with the passing of religious faith as they desperately search for meaning or cause in the new secular frontier (Layne's "cause" in the film is rigid loyalty to John, since he had "his reasons" for murdering the girl, and covering up his crime). Most of the characters are neither likable nor unlikable; they're just human beings trying to live and find meaning or fulfillment with the hand they've been dealt.The film runs 99 minutes and was shot in California (Sacramento, La Crescenta and Los Angeles).BOTTOM LINE: Glover steals the show with an over-the-top (yet believable) performance in a film that details the dark side of coming-of-age in modern America. It plays like a mid-80's version of Coppola's "The Outsiders" (1983), which was about early 60's youths; note, for instance, the seemingly incongruent melodramatic score (there's also a great metal soundtrack, but the songs are merely soundbites). People who have grown up in loving homes with positive role models & friends probably won't like "River's Edge." They'll likely think it's trash. However, those who grew up in the dysfunctional insanity depicted in the film understand it fully. And many of us are doing everything in our power to prevent our kids and other youths from experiencing it. GRADE: B+

Spoiler: My ex-girlfriend of ages ago said this had happened at her high school, Pioneer High, in San Jose, CA. Though she didn't get one of the tours of the corpse, she heard about it at the time and when it was made into a movie, of course, she made me watch the movie. I'd have to say, it's a creepy film - actually not the film's fault - the idea of giving tours of a crime scene is creepy and that's ironically what really happened. Still, there's something about that era that I find captivating and that all these kids who saw the corpse pretty much kept it to themselves, maybe saying "that's cool" and moving on. So odd that so many should have seen it and said nothing about it to the authorities. Like some kind of freak show attraction that nobody questions or feels guilty about viewing, like there's nothing morally wrong about it at all. I find it fascinating and yet sad that society at some point can break like this. Like as if you were in the midst of a drunken riot stampede and came upon a corpse or two that had been trampled upon but ran right over it anyway without a second thought because so many others before you already had. As if to say, all those people can't be wrong... and yet they are/were. Really great movie. Sad that it actually happened but maybe we can learn by the mistakes of others and not let morals slide aside just because a certain number before us already did.