SnoopyStyle Policeman Abel Grey (Edward Burns) is tasked to investigate a body found in the frozen river. It turns out to be a student living in a nearby boarding school. Everybody wants this to be a simple suicide, but Abel is sure that he was murdered. The only person who liked him was fellow student Carlin Leander (Rachelle Lefevre) and teacher Betsy Chase (Jennifer Ehle).It was a slow grind for the first half. It was pretty quickly evident what the plot points are. But it kept slowing down, going back to flashbacks, and going nowhere. The second half had better pace, and the story moved better. In the end, the mystery wasn't as compelling as it should be.Edward Burns was competent if not very exciting. His backstory could have been better explained. The same can be said of all those flashbacks with the boy. They all could be better.

random_avenger The corpse of a private school student (played by Thomas Gibson in flashbacks) is found in a frozen river near a small town. The local authorities would prefer to dismiss the case as a simple suicide or an accident, but an honest cop named Abel Grey (Edward Burns) cannot ignore the clues pointing to a more complex truth. Perhaps a female student Carlin (Rachelle Lefevre) knows more about the case? A kind and beautiful female teacher Betsy (Jennifer Ehle) might also be able to help.The film is clearly work of professionals: the direction, photography and music give no reason to complain, but the movie is not without its problems. My main criticism is the lead character Abel who is left a somewhat blank and uninteresting vanilla hero in the end. Some brief scenes casting light on his childhood traumas aren't enough to make him appear as a real, living person, and the handsome but uncharismatic Edward Burns cannot bring him to life either. The other main character, the young man that is found in the river at the beginning, is a much more riveting character and left me wishing I had learned more about his inner life. The redheaded Carlin character would also have deserved more attention at the expense of Abel.Ultimately The River King is a watchable if somewhat forgettable mystery tale. There are occasional highlights, the haunting ending being an obvious example, but overall the film doesn't grab the attention of the audience very tightly and just slips by for the most part. It's not really a bad film though, so watch it if the premise sounds interesting to you.

MBunge The first thing I did after watching The Silence of the Lambs for the first time was run out and read the original novel by Thomas Harris. It was that good a movie. The River King is based on a book by Alice Hoffman but after viewing this film, I not only don't want to read the book, I don't ever want to meet Alice Hoffman in person. In fact, if Alice Hoffman were drowning, I wouldn't throw her a life preserver. If she were on fire, I wouldn't cross the street to spit on her. If she were starving, I wouldn't let her lick the Cheeto dust off my fingers. That's how disappointing this movie is.What passes for a plot in this thing involves small town police officer Able Grey (Edward Burns) investigating the death of a student at the exclusive Haddan School, which seems to be the idea of an English boarding school transplanted to America from someone who not only has never been to England but I don't think ever actually went to school. The girls school on The Facts of Life TV show was more realistic than this.Anyway…after the body of young August Pierce (Thomas Gibson) is found under the frozen ice of the local river, which is really more of a creek than a river, Able and his partner Joey (John Kapelos) set out to investigate. Their inquiries are somewhat hampered by the desire of the Haddan administration to dismiss August's death as a suicide and the pressure brought to that end on the local police. A bigger difficulty for Able and Joey is that they appear to be the worst cops to ever wear a badge. These doofuses make Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show look like a combination of Columbo, Eliot Ness and T. J. Hooker.While poking around, Able talks to but never gets any useful information from a red head named Carlin (Rachelle Lefevre), August's fellow student and only friend at the school. She's the sort of girl who treats August like her gay best friend, even though he's not gay. Although, it's not entirely clear from the story if August is gay or not…or if he is gay, whether Carlin or even August realize it. That's the sort of quality storytelling on display here.Able also meets a teacher at the Haddan School, Betsy Chase (Jennifer Ehle). She doesn't really contribute anything to his examination of August's death either, but Able and Betsy do fall into bed together in one of the least believable romances in the history of men and women having sex. It would have made just as much sense for Able to fall in love with August's corpse as it did for him and Betsy to get together.As the film plods along, we get some flashbacks of August's life at school, Able gets an assload of evidence indicating August's death was a murder essentially handed to him by the Almighty Plot Hammer and August's ghost even makes an appearance in the story. No, I'm not joking about that. Finally…and I mean FINALLY…we get to a conclusion literally cobbled together from some of the oldest clichés imaginable, including a twist so pathetic it's more like a mild sprain.As terrible as the totality of The River King is, the black hole of suck at the heart of it is Edward Burns. How does this guy keep getting work? I know he's demonstrated some talent as a filmmaker, but he has to be the most impassive actor of his generation. There are giant stone heads on Easter Island that have a greater range of expression than Burns. His performance in this movie ranges from looking like he's trying to remember a phone number to looking like he just smelled his own fart. He's handsome and all that but for the sake of every struggling actor out there, stop hiring this guy!I occasionally wonder if I am too harsh in criticizing bad films. Even something as ghastly as The River King involved the hard work of many talented people. But when I watch a movie like this one, which is nothing more than a waste of everyone's time, I'm reassured that warning people against such films in the strongest possible terms is the right thing to do.So, in the strongest possible terms…don't watch this movie.

samkan I like to like movies that qualify as small gems. TRK had all the potential for such and, for the first forty minutes or so, looked to qualify. The acting wasn't bad (Ed Burns is just a bit too low key) the script is crisp and the pacing, shoot and story suspenseful. Indeed there were a dozen different prospects for; e.g., who the bad guy was going to be. I can't agree with some of the other comments herein that there was enough mood, fine acting, dialog, etc., to distinguish TRK as excellent cinema. But again, after more than a half hour I'm totally absorbed by the plot potential.It is almost as if TRK sets up the viewer for a thousand possibilities only to intentionally fulfill absolutely none of them. A move "fizzles" when it paints itself into a corner then escapes in a clumsy manner. TRK paints itself into a corner and then climbs out a window. Again, there are not enough fine points about this movie to make it enjoyable on another level. Virtually every aspect of the build-up centers on facts, twists, questions, etc., that go unanswered. It is truly difficult to imagine what the makers of TRK wanted the viewer to enjoy about this movie.