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Rating:  - Buyer beware! (Please read my review)
The reason that I indicated "please read my review" is that generally customers disregard 1 star review. But I couldn't give something more in order to make it convincible. In fact if I had the opportunity I would have given 0 starts...
The film is EXXXTTTTREEEEEEMMMLLLYYYYY DULL AND SLOW! It is a type of film that will make you ask yourself "so whatt??" in the end. In fact you start to ask this to yourself even in the middle of the film.
Just a note to bear in mind: If you come across with the trailer of the movie by chance, you need to know that it doesn't reflect the actual synopsis of the film. It reflects as if this movie is a creepy horror film. It is not. It would be in the drama category I think. I saw the trailer in the DVD of Half Light, which is a product of the same movie company. BTW, Half Light altough not perfect, was far much better.
Rating:  - Atmospheric but tepid
The River King is a passable evening's entertainment that merits a repeat viewing, provided your expectations are limited to one or more of the following: a "New England-y" movie with lots of New England-type (in reality, Halifax) snow scenes; remote, elite prep school movies and/or hazing films; murder mystery with vague sense of unease/discord.
Good acting will, however, be in short supply (that's right, I'm here speaking of...well, everyone except the British guy aka Julian Rhind-Hutt). Ditto on contiguous, well-integrated narrative lines and quality sound production (maybe it was the mics, but everyone sounds like they were recorded with a ten-dollar Radio Shack tape recorder).
I've not read The River King, but I have read two or three other Hoffman novels. She is not, for me, the best of contemporary writers, but she comes up with interesting stories with strong senses of place/setting (usually New England) and her polished style is rich in metaphor
and a northern (Anglo) version of magical-realism. Having read other of her works (and seen the very silly but fairly entertaining Practical Magic), I can say that her work appears difficult to translate to film. Here, for example, the tadpoles trope (which screams "Hoffman magical realism alert") was quite foolishly played with an emphasis on the realism rather than the magic.
Yet despite the expected pitfalls of Hoffman adaptation, the filmmakers could have done a better job with this project, perhaps by excising the face-in-the-photographs theme, which misleadingly promises a supernatural storyline. The only ghosts in this movie are psychological.
Ed Burns looks too much like Sean Hayes ("Will & Grace")for me to take him seriously as a self-contained, troubled cop. Plus, his reading of some of his lines causes me to seriously question how he ever made it big in movies. British actor Jamie King plays bad boyfriend Harry, and his lousy American accent mirrors his acting skills. Quebec-born Rachelle LeFevre is passable as the grieving best friend Carlin, and her lovely mane of red-gold curls distracts us enough that we don't really notice any faltering steps.
Half British-half American Jennifer Ehle pulls out the rusty American accent of her youth (it has been asserted she can slip in and out of equally perfect Yank and Brit accents at will), although Yank is in fact a misnomer; she "cayn't" help but speak in an odd corruption of her native North Carolinian twang.
The score is solid and offers and appropriate feeling of discord, with the best work--on what sounds like a mandolin or dulcimer--over the credits.
If you are interested primarily in "atmosphere" of the sort that suggests everyone is hiding a secret, and if you can tolerate uneven acting and a few poor accents, by all means, pick up the River King. Mostly, you will enjoy this provided your expectations are not high, especially due to the big-name actors.
I've watched it twice now and will likely pop it in again on a rainy Sunday when I am avoiding housework. Here's hoping you can find an equally good use for it.
Rating:  - Waterlogged
A murder mystery at an elite school, wrapped in the silent chill of a snowy winter. Why not? Well, "The River King" shows that a movie needs a coherent plot as well as a unique style, but it belly flops painfully with its uninspiring acting, meandering storyline, and an ending that completely bombs.
Student Gus Pierce (Thomas Gibson) is found frozen in the river. Cop Abel Grey (Edward Burns) investigates the elite prep school that Gus attended, trying to find out if it was an accident, suicide, or murder -- any of them is possible, since Gus was quite angry. Abel also finds time to romance a teacher at the school (Jennifer Ehle).
But the mystery of Gus's death is that no one seems to care -- his classmates despised him, and the police drop the case without warning, despite signs of foul play. But with his personal demons emerging, Abel continues investigating the case, suspecting it of being a hazing gone wrong -- and discovers that he may have been wrong all along.
But if you must adjust a book's plot for a movie, then at least it should make sense. And for seventy-five percent of "River King," the plot seems like a straightforward murder mystery, framed in beautiful New England houses, snow, icy rivers and sleeping trees. Okay, the actual investigations could be covered in fifteen minutes rather than an hour, but it's all right.
Then... it all comes apart. Burns and Ehle's relationship feels thrown in (does obsession let you have breaks for romance?). Director Nick Willing and writer David Kane try to make this a jack-of-all-trades film, with the token romance, ghost stories, murder mystery, and a creepy philosophical high school club. Most of these subplots are touched on just long enough to make them seem bizarre, but not enough to make them a part of the movie.
And the finale makes no sense -- after dozens of clues, sinister coverups, and glaringly obvious murder, Willing and Kane decide to throw a "shocking twist" into the finale. Except it's not a twist -- suddenly the whole lone-wolf murder mystery becomes a catalyst for Abel's family problems. It's a MASSIVE anticlimax that feels like a sandbag whack in the face. Viewers are left with nothing. At all.
Burns does what he can with his role, even though Abel is somnolent at best. The only scenes where he gets to show what he can do is when Abel is angry. And he has zero chemistry with Jennifer Ehle, who does a nice job despite a paper-thin character and bad wig. Rachelle Lefevre is the only actress who gets to play a character of any dimensions -- the slightly off galpal of Gus'.
"The River King" had so much promise, but it bogs down in its glacial plot and absurdist ending. Even Ehle and Burns can't save this soggy, cold little mess.
Rating:  - Powerful film that should be avoided by small minded idiots with ADD
Gorgeously brooding cinematography, brilliant and perfectly chosen cast and a deeply emotive score characterize this melancholy reflection on the death of a young man and the ripples it has on the lives of a cop, a teacher and a close friend. Easily one of the best films of 2005 that sadly fell under the radar. This is one of those rare gems that real film lovers will discover in the years to come and hold up as an example of what a great movie can really be.
Sadly now you're stuck with reviews on Amazon.com from 3 camps:
1) The book purists who decry any derivation from the original source material and refuse to look at the film apart from the novel (a complaint that's understood but unjustified and unfair when judging a film on its own merits);
2) Moronic, tasteless idiots (usually younger viewers but not necessarily) who lack a brain, a heart and any measure of patience for anything that doesn't involve slick antiheroes, fast-paced violence and debasing sex;
3) Fans of the material who like what they've seen but struggle to properly synopsize or understand it due to the film's subtleties and metaphoric nature. I'll put myself in this latter category as I think the film is best experienced than read about, but as there are so many dim-witted responses to this film, I might as well try my own dim-witted attempt to explain what is so incredible about this picture.
I won't go into the plot, save to say that it begins with the discovery of a body in a river and the investigation by an honest police officer (played by Burns) who starts to see evidence that more is involved than an accident.
The three leads are very real, tragic characters that belong to the town's icy wasteland which has become infused with the mysterious death that in each of their lives takes on almost mythological proportions.
Burns is absolutely perfect in the role of a cop whose grief for his long dead brother is triggered by the investigation and possible cover-up. Unspoken and stoic, the grief is all in his achingly haunted eyes; like the small town blanketed in winter the character is frozen by sorrow, unable to move forward in his life.
Burns is joined by the ever wonderful Jennifer Ehle (Pride & Prejudice), a teacher in the school where the boy attended, who in her own way becomes obsessed by the tragedy of the case. Unlike Burns, Ehle is frozen not by the past, but by the future -- engaged to a man that is utterly void and cold -- yet unable to see a way out for herself.
Lastly there is the dead boy's friend played by Rachelle Lefevre, a young woman traumatized by the possibility that her friend may have committed suicide due to a fight she had with him shortly prior to his death. Unable to cope with the part she may have played, she becomes a stark figure of grief stuck in the icy landscape of a terrible moment.
Part of what makes this film so powerful and refreshing is it's deft use of music, camera and subtle metaphoric elements to create a deeply moody palette that approaches myth, yet remains utterly real and hauntingly reflective without falling into the cliched supernatural thriller mold. Likewise, while utilizing some of the trappings of mystery and cop films, it never descends into the cliche of the violent police film, nor the mystery movie that presents twists just for the sake of fooling the audience.
This film works at a much higher level than all of that. Yet despite its metaphysical elements, it's never pretentious or ungrounded in real life, even if at times that reality is heightened. There is a rare emotive quality here that weaves a spell akin to what great literature is able to achieve, creating genuine mystery and keeping the reality of the plot from ever feeling altogether depressing (which some feel while reading a newspaper for example.) It's aptly named The River King as there are layers of depth that will have you returning to the film and even picking up the original novel by Alice Hoffman. Sadly, the only thing lacking is any kind of extras on the DVD (save the trailer which is terribly cut to make the film look like something else.) A future release with director's and actors' commentary, an interview with Alice Hoffman, deleted scenes and other added bonuses would be great! That said, the 16x9 transfer is incredibly life-like and detailed. The 5.1 sound makes good use of the surrounds where appropriate to create and sustain the film's stark atmosphere.
Without revealing anything, I think where some people find themselves disappointed in the film (apart from the simpleminded buffoons who demand Hollywood cliches and can't handle something different) is that the River King takes the viewer on a journey that shows us glimpses of an elusive heightened sense of reality, but brings us back to the surface of the real world. And it is a grievous world. And yet as in the image of spring and the flowing water, lives become unthawed, and the story is redeemed from being too unremittingly grim. Not every mystery is solved, and not everything is perfectly tied up. Nor should it be. That's not how life is. And the river keeps its own secrets.
If nothing else I've said makes any sense, trust me when I say this: If you appreciate a movie that actually makes you feel something, and doesn't have to provide pat answers and false thrills, pick up The River King.
Rating: - A Promise Not Kept
This is a thoughtful, well-made film but its problem is that the ending leaves the viewer disappointed and let-down. It poses a number of interesting, possible answers to the death of a young man, yet the "truth" of that death leaves both the viewer and the hero of the story feeling that we have wasted our time in trying to make sense of it. This film has the saving grace of Jennifer Ehle, whose beauty and grace shine far beyond her role. There is something magical about this actress and the film is worth seeing if only to watch her. Another of her films, "Possession," is similarly lit by her performance.
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