Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

RocDot Keanu was 22 and second billed! But for low a budget film great cinematography, direction and GREAT cast! Anything with Dennis Hopper rocks on of course, RIP Dennis! And when Dennis did this movie (1986) he was 50yo. Remember he played next to Jimmy Dean, Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson thirty years earlier (1955) when he was Keanu and Crispin's age in academy award winner "Giant"!

tiekbane The acting and writing in this movie are so over-the-top that it cannot possibly have been meant to be taken serious. Crispin Glovers' wild-eyed affected performance is not to be missed. It is the pinnacle of his career. Dennis Hopper is perfectly cast as Feck, the aging biker who claims to have killed a girl in the past but that he loved her so it's OK. The psycho kid with the nun chucks is hilarious in a totally non- speaking role. And Keanu Reeves acts like, well, Keanu Reeves. This movie boasts line after line of quotable dialogue. The killers' nick name is John because his last name is 'Tollet" which sounds like toilet. Check out the reason John killed the girl. You will never get tired of this movie. A classic!

tomgillespie2002 There were two films released in 1986 whose youthful protagonists confronted death in the form of a dead body. The first, Rob Reiner's coming-of-age drama, Stand By Me, was set in 1959 and followed three friends on a journey simply to witness a dead body, what they find (as the narrator advises) is themselves and each other. But what this film also highlights in the closing moments, is that these three kids, are the generation that will almost certainly be confronted with death in a more profound way, in Vietnam. Following shortly after Stand By Me, River's Edge was released, which tackled, not the nostalgic journey of three kids, who spend an encapsulated moment of perfection before innocence is lost, but portrayed a very contemporary place where the teenagers (the kids of the men who went to Vietnam) seem completely detached from death: desensitised perhaps. Vietnam was, after all the first televised war in world history.This is a generation completely alienated from, and of course (as teenagers do) suspicious of the adult world, like no other generation before. These kids are from broken homes. 'John', a tall, bulking, detached guy nonchalantly tells his group of friends that he has killed a peer, Jamie (Danyi Deats), and left her naked by a river. Of course the friends do not believe him at first, but as they are all gradually taken to the site where the body lies, the event is proved. However, with such a fundamentally deep and seemingly unbreakable barrier between the adult world and the young, the murder is kept within the circle. Crispin Glover's Lanye (with his usual jittery, yet brimming style), takes the lead in covering up the conspiracy, but the group inevitably fractures and that adult wall is opened. Once this opens the adult world is confronted with a teenaged generation that is numb; that is, these 'young adults' have shown no emotion to the death of one of their fellow students.It's a damning indictment of the MTV (or Gen X) generation, whose diet of consumption in all of its capacities, had seemingly completely detached from society. It had seen it's parents generation fail in revolution, only to be eaten up be 'the system', becoming the executives of the money hungry 1980's. The only adult character that the group has any genuine contact with is a recluse, who's girlfriend is of the blow- up variety, selling weed to them, perhaps still living that '60's dream? Dennis Hopper's Feck provides this anchor between the generations - but his clearly boarder line mentality simply highlights that the dream has gone.With some decent performances from the likes of Keanu Reeves, Joshua Miller (whose precocious performance probably lead to him being cast as a 50 year old vampire in Katheryn Bigalow's Near Dark (1987), and particularly the killer, 'John', played with distance, and genuinely hauntingly detached looks, by Daniel Roebuck. Along with some beautifully stark cinematography by Frederick Elmes (who had collaborated with David Lynch on Eraserhead (1977) and Blue Velvet (1986)), the project also seems aesthetically and thematically linked to the later Twin Peaks televisions series (for which Tim Hunter directed some episodes). The film leaves you with a sour taste, perhaps the start of societal detachment that might later lead to events such as the Columbine shootings: Writer Neal Jimenez did loosely base River's Edge on a real life incident involving 16 year old Anthony Jacques Broussard in Milpitas, California on November 3 1981.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

knucklebreather "River's Edge" is a very perplexing movie. The most striking feature of the movie seems to be the universally apathetic characters. In the opening sequence we learn that Samson, a very large, uncontrollable teenager has killed Jamie, a member of his group of stoner friends from school, and left her naked body by the river's edge.While there are many movies about heartless killers, Samson is fully realized, such as he is, and I was struck by the utter lack of any rime or reason to his actions, any "Hollywood" touches to humanize him or explain what he did. He killed a girl and really doesn't care. There was no planning, before or after, no moralizing, at most he is amused by it.Samson (also called John because of his last name) tells his friends, who display apathy that might be shocking. The only one who seems to care is Layne (Crispin Glover) who wants to cover it up so his friend doesn't get arrested and executed. But the rest don't really seem too shaken by it, they don't get mad at John, they even justify his actions, and they certainly don't go to the police right away.River's Edge works because there is no clear message. I'm sure many people can find one in it, but it's definitely not a movie that hits you over the head with some moral. It presents some very strangely behaving people, who are often over the top but depicted with just enough realism that you have to take what is going on seriously. The fun in this movie is that you get to float around in this shockingly apathetic teenage wasteland for an hour and a half, and see what you can make of it.The main problem I had with the movie was the direction and soundtrack, which coincide to create awkward transitions and moments where "River's Edge" feels like a crappy low-budget flick you'd find being mocked on MST3K. None of the dialogue or plot falls into that category, but it's the transitions between scenes, where they often just kind of end unimpressive and cut to the next one.The soundtrack also kept drawing me away from the movie. It includes some edgy metal for 1986, which is perfectly fine for the movie, but it doesn't do much with it, and instead most of the music is an orchestral soundtrack. Parts of it are very atmospheric and perfect for the movie's feel, but at other times it is hitting cliché film score notes during tense scenes and really seeming quite cheesy. I contrasted this movie with "Picnic at Hanging Rock", a spiritual cousin of "River's Edge" I would say, where the score was so utterly perfect at always building the mood, and really think River's Edge could have been an incredible movie with a score that consistent.River's Edge isn't perfect. I had honestly never even heard of it until I saw it mentioned as a superior film with the same basic themes as "Bully" by Larry Clark. I am very glad I rented it, and am a bit surprised I'd never heard of it. It deserves to be better known. It has some flaws and not everyone will like it, but there is a lot of depth here, and of course its cast includes several famous people in early or debut roles.