Brandon at Random Reviews

I love a good tension-filled adventure movie. For my money, the best movies are the ones that keep your blood pumping and the intensity high. Then again, for my money, a movie just has to like…not suck to be enjoyable, which is sometimes a very tall order. There has to at least be something being built to, and this flick wastes not one fucking minute, so buckle the hell up. Actually slow down, it wastes some minutes getting there.

First off, you’ve got Meryl Streep, who is the diamond-encrusted platinum standard for acting. We should count ourselves lucky to have lived in at least some of same time and space as her. So many great performances, so many great films. Then we have Kevin Bacon, who is a criminally underrated actor, and I’d love to see in more good stuff, especially these days. I feel like this goes without saying, but both Streep and Bacon are spectacular here, but shit. I mean duh.

This movie is about a family river-rafting trip that encounters a great deal of obstacles. David Strathairn plays Streep’s husband. I would tell you where you know Strathairn from, but I always think of him as “that guy from The River Wild” so I’m not gonna be any help for you here, but I don’t know, maybe look him up on IMDb or something. Don’t make me hold your hand through this. Also, speaking of that, it reminds me of a time I encountered someone at work who I had this conversation with me:

“Hey, Brandon, you really love movies and you know a lot about them. I bet you’re good at Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”

I wasn’t really eager to be made a fool of if I couldn’t do it. “Well maybe, I don’t know.”

They ignored me and blurted out “TOM CRUISE!”

I replied quickly. “Well Tom Cruise was in A Few Good Men with Kevin Bacon soooo…” which was easily my proudest moment in all my 34.75 years.

So anyway, back to this motion picture. There is a lot of intensity with the times rafting/excitement and then with marital problems and tension building interspersed throughout. There are a few slow spots, but it’s certainly not a major issue. We as viewers are slowly shown what’s really going at the end of the first act/beginning of the second act, and then things really start to pick up.

The guy who directed this, Curtis Hanson, also made LA Confidential which is definitely a better movie than The River Wild. He also made the semi-autobiographical Eminem movie 8 Mile, which in retrospect was like 20 minutes of great rap battles and 90 minutes of mediocre dramatic scenes. Anyhoo, back to my original topic, The River Wild. It’s pretty good. It’s a great hangover movie imo. Also great score, fits the events of the story really well and adds to the excitement.

As I’ve been saying, this one is solid. Solid actors. Solid acting. Solid story. No too shabby. It’s on HBO Max now. Check it out, yo.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Eminem: “My motto: Fuck Lotto, I’ll get the seven digits from your mother for a dollar tomorrow.”

Crowd: “Ooooooooooooooh!”