Just what I expected

Just perfect...

Best movie ever!

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Back* in the day when I first saw it, I was quite impressed with it. Truly a darkly controversial movie dealing with deeply disturbing subject. As RavenGlamDVDCollector, I've been putting off adding it to my collection for a long time, back in my VHS days, I'd had some misgivings about something with such negative imagery, and here we have a stark-naked glazed- eyes corpse... but recently realized I've got zilch, nada, zip of Ione Skye, so finally got around to obtaining this DVD.*I'm South African, this movie wasn't released here until much, much later. Our censors back then would have taken just one look at the naked white corpse and prayed for damnation of all that is Hollywood. After viewing, I found my opinion of this movie had changed considerably.I guess it is held in very high regard by the average reviewer here. So, hate me for this:I think it is a wasted opportunity to have delivered something better. Why?1) Crispin Glover is nothing but theatrically camp. His strung-out on drugs character comes across as simply a kinda effeminate loopy guy who'd have gotten his ass kicked in real life instead of having any friends. Over-acting, over-the-top, lays it on super-thick and then puts an extra layer on top of all that for extra overkill. I'm sorry, but you're just a comic, dude. (the two little boys were far more convincing, though the lead one was over-acting as well)2) Dennis Hopper can do better than that. Come on! At times he seemed to be laughing at his own silly antics. He was more goofy than creepy.I expected beforehand that I was really gonna enjoy this. And the way it starts, Daniel Roebuck was perfect, and I was settling in for A WINNER, but no...Who would have taken a guy like Layne seriously? Light-weight mascara'd halfway lady boy Layne?Daniel Roebuck also throws it away with an uneven performance, like, every time the dude speaks. Moodily just sitting there smoking at the beginning, he was perfect as some thuggish anti- social creep, until speaking up...Unexplained: The corpse was naked. The flashback murder seems to have been non-sexual, like a game gone wrong, and she was clothed. What gives? Goofs: Rigor mortis. One moment, the corpse has a hand that is still slack. Next moment, as it is rolled into the water, really really sickeningly stiff (like a dummy). People, take reality into account. I have a good mind to post it as a Goof, but I'd have to do some research on rigor mortis first besides what my common horse-sense tells me, and, er, no thanks...Plus point de lux for the movie : Two beautiful actors, the hottest couple back then. Keanu Reeves and Ione Skye. She is just beautiful.But miscast. Her character is kinda dumb. Some things dawn a bit slowly on that chick. While Ione Skye is so clearly bright and outright compassionate (you can tell that simply by looking at her) (those eyes!). One of the best scenes (which was just kicking up the movie a notch) was her reaction to the corpse of her friend - she retreats, abject horror, but it was cut short. Oh, waste!And, of course, had Ione not been in this, I'd not have been associated with this movie. At all. I'm very, very sensitive to dead-eyed white corpses as well.They almost had something much, much better here.Do not understand me wrong: Basically, it remains a good product. Like many others here would attest. But with more mistakes than there should have been. Some of them very serious flaws. I'm saying what Crispin gave, well was a notable performance, but entirely not the really needed one. As an outsider character, sure, that performance, yes, but he wouldn't have had such followers. Somebody else should have been the driving force, the leader.Then it would have been riveting, edgy... (get it???)

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"!

In many ways, this movie defined what I was not at the time – suburban, stoned, a metalhead – and it was an opportunity for me to feel moral superiority over "normal" American teenagers. But, I think that I was drawn in on a similar level to the movies I identified with more closely from the punk world ("Repo Man," "Sid & Nancy," "Suburbia"), which were themselves fairly critical adult statements about youthful apathy. This movie offers a kind of uncertain hope in the form of Keanu Reeves' character (and he's never been better), but in the end we begin to wonder if he did the right thing for the right reasons, or sort of blundered into it the way Crispin Glover blunders into a fanatical dedication to being wrong. It does remain thoughtful, if scary, and effective on other levels as well, including humor, oddly enough.

"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.