THE RIVER WILD
A film review by Eric Grossman
Copyright 1994 LOS ANGELES INDEPENDENT
Actresses always complain that they are not paid as much as their male counterparts. Executives and producers explain that the reason for the disparity is men make action movies that sell big overseas. Women on the other hand have fewer choice roles and the ones that they do get tend to be dramas that do not translate well in foreign markets. Meryl Streep, probably tired of seeing men who cannot act their way out of a paper bag earn several times what she does, has chucked her accents for muscles in the new river-adventure, THE RIVER WILD.
This story about a woman who must save her family while on a white-water rafting trip is trite and pales in the obvious comparison to DELIVERANCE. However, Streep is very good in her role as Gail, an expert river-guide whose marriage to the job-obsessed, wimpy Tom (David Strathairn) is on the rocks, no pun intended. Gail thinks the trip will help bring her family together and boy does it ever. They meet some really nasty people that have picked a particularly dangerous escape route and they mean to take Gail and company along.
THE RIVER WILD has all the necessary components for a good action/thriller. There is the young boy, Roarke (played by JURASSIC PARK's dinosaur bait, Joseph Mazzello) to make sure there is extra danger. Kevin Bacon is the antagonist, Wade, a ruthless thief who is tough as nails, so tough in fact that he plans his escape down a roaring river even though he can't swim. Finally, there is the family dog, Maggie, who is smarter than all the humans in the film. All the ingredients are ready, now we just have to add water, white water to be exact.
Unfortunately, something went wrong in the Hollywood blender. Director Curtis Hanson who made the commercially successful but mediocre film, "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle," whips up some fancy aerial shots over the river and some decent action sequences but he never creates enough credible tension. Since the screenwriter, Denis O'Neill, forgot to pack interesting surprises and twists in the script, it is Hanson's job to find a way to make us think we do not know what will happen. Technically everything is perfect, but even Streep's acting and Jerry Goldsmith's solid score can't sell us the danger. Like most Hollywood films, we know everything will be fine. The difference with this film is that we never doubt that we know this.
All said and done, the production crew deserves a lot of credit for even getting the film done. It was made under tremendous adversity stemming from the unique problems of shooting a film on the rapids. There was considerable danger for the actors and as the film shows, Ms. Streep did one hell of a job steering those rafts. The physicality of her performance and the risks she took allow us to buy her all the way as the ex-river guide. Somehow if I was stuck on a wild river and she was there, I would feel a lot safer. Will she become the next action star? No way. However, she has proved once again that there is no role she cannot do.
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