The Keanu Reeves Project: River's Edge

RIVER'S EDGE (Movie, 1986) - Matt

I just want to start off by saying that I'm very thankful I wasn't a teenager in the 80's.  The fashion was terrible.  The music was terrible.  Crime rates were rampant.  Ronald Reagan was president.  Actually, strike that last one, Reagan being president now would be an improvement, and I'm talking about his literally lifeless bones.

River's Edge, released in early 1997 to theaters (but listed on IMDB as 1986 because some of Keanu's earlier works seem to be a little out of order) encompassed everything wrong with the 80's, but most specifically the absolute apathy of growing up in a bumfuck town with nowhere to go and nothing to do.

I'd heard of this one before sitting down to watch it the other night but knew nothing about it so I did a little bit of research both before and after my viewing.  River's Edge was actually very loosely based on a murder in 1981 where the killer, the victim's teenage boyfriend, apparently took about a dozen of his friends to see the corpse within days of killing her.  Nobody said anything, nobody reported it to the cops, apparently they just didn't care.

And that's basically the premise of River's Edge.

The movie stars Keanu Reeves and Crispin Glover, along with major performances by Dennis Hopper and Joshua John Miller.

"Wait," you're probably asking yourself, "Who the fuck is Joshua John Miller?"

He's this guy, the incredible weirdo younger brother in the 1989 classic, "Teen Witch" who apparently grew up to become a member of Leonardo Dicaprio's clique, the Pussy Posse.

So, a quick summary of River's Edge:

The movie opens with teenage burnout loser Samson sitting over the body of his dead girlfriend who he strangled to death along the edge of the river.  The reason he's killed her?  Apparently she said something derogatory about his dead mother.  

Samson proceeds to bring a number of his friends to see the dead body, including Matt (Keanu Reeves), Layne (Crispin Glover) and a number of others.  Due to boredom, apathy or something else, nobody seems to be too affected at all by this, including the dead girl's best friends, who Samson also brings along.

In fact, the only person who seems to care at all is Layne who wants to do whatever he can to protect Samson from getting into trouble for the murder.  So Layne decides to hide Samson at the house of the local shut-in/drug dealer/weirdo Feck, played by Dennis Hopper.  Feck is a strange guy in that he apparently never leaves his house because he too once killed his girlfriend and is apparently a fugitive from the law, although it's never really explained.

There are two other weird tidbits about Feck.  First, he's the world's nicest drug dealer.  Local high school kids apparently go to his house and he just gives away weed for free.  Second, he keeps a blowup doll with him at all times because apparently, it's the only "human" interaction he ever gets.  Okay, sure.

Tim and Samson go for a drive.  Please note Tim's sweet dangly sword earring.

The movie takes place over the course of a day or a few days, it's a bit hard to tell, but eventually Samson tells his entire group of friends about what he's done and instead of you know, doing anything about it, they mostly sit around getting stoned and hanging out at the arcade.

The kid on the far right is wearing a shirt that says, "Fuck the Redskins," who were actually a relevant professional football team in 1986.  Not so much now.  

Eventually, Keanu Reeves starts feeling guilty and goes to the cops to "narc" on Samson.  Samson has spends his evening hanging out with Feck, eventually telling Feck about his reasons, or lack thereof, for the murder and then Feck kills Samson (off-screen) because he realizes Samson is a bit of a monster, or something like that.  There's a also a subplot where Keanu's younger brother is running around town with his little hoodlum friend, causing trouble and planning to kill Keanu even though that never actually materializes.  

And that's basically the movie.  Noted weirdo Crispin Glover's performance is certainly something in this as seen in this short clip:

I read a handful of user reviews after watching this to see if I could figure out why this movie is apparently a cult favorite.  I guess it's supposed to sum up the apathy of disaffected teenagers and sure, it does that, but not in a completely believable way.  The movie reminded me a bit of the extremely uncomfortable and terrible 2001 movie, Bully, in which a group of loser teenagers also kill one of their friends and do an abysmal job of covering up the murder.  

Anyway, that's River's Edge.

Matt and Layne driving around.  Approximately 50% of this movie is Crispin Glover driving around.

BEST PART: I don't know.  Realizing Richie from "Teen Witch" was in this?

WORST PART: Tough call, but I'm going to go with all the scenes with Dennis Hopper and a blow-up doll.  No, wait, every scene with Crispin Glover doing....whatever it is he's doing in this.

Box Office Mojo information:  $1.7 Million budget, $4.6 Million Domestic, widest release - 3 Theaters.  

Rotten Tomatoes: 87% Critic, 76% Audience 

IMDB: 7.0

My Movie Rating: 4/10.  Maybe you needed to be a teenager in the 80's to really get this one.  For me, there is nothing at all special about this and I will never watch this again.  

Keanu Rating: 5/10.  Keanu once again plays a bit of a degenerate with a conscience as it seems like he's being typecast a bit in his early career.  But hey, a job is a job and this was his first actual American full-length movie (albeit independent and very low budget).  He's not good, he's not bad, he's just sort of there.  

Up next - My slog through the mid 80's continues with yet another TV movie, Under the Influence.  I really can't wait until I get to the end of the decade...