in memoriam 1942 – 2013 | river's edges edge...crispin glover as layne , dennis hopper as...

2/12/2014 River's Edge Movie Review & Film Summary (1987) | Roger Ebert

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/rivers-edge-1987 1/3

In Memoriam 1942 – 2013 | ★ ★ ★ ★

RIVER'S EDGE (1987)Cast

Crispin Glover as Layne , Dennis Hopper as Feck , Keanu Reeves asMatt , Ione Skye Leitch as Clarissa , Daniel Roebuck as Sampson ,Joshua Miller as Tim , Roxanna Zal as Maggie ,

Directed by

Tim Hunter,

Produced by

Sarah Pillsbury, Midge Sanford,

Screenplay by

Neal Jimenez,

Photographed by

Frederick Elmes,Edited by

Howard Smith, Sonya Sones,

Music by

Jurgen Knieper,Crime, Drama

Rated R

99 minutes

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| Roger EbertMay 29, 1987 | ☄ 0

I remember reading about the case at the time. A high school kid killed his girlfriend and left her body lying onthe ground. Over the next few days, he brought some of his friends out to look at her body, and gradually word ofthe crime spread through his circle of friends. But for a long time, nobody called the cops.

A lot of op-ed articles were written to analyze this event, which was seen as symptomatic of a wider moralbreakdown in our society. "River's Edge," which is a horrifying fiction inspired by the case, offers no explanationand no message; it regards the crime in much the same way the kid's friends stood around looking at the body.The difference is that the film feels a horror that the teenagers apparently did not.

This is the best analytical film about a crime since "The Onion Field" and "In Cold Blood." Like those films, itposes these questions: Why do we need to be told this story? How is it useful to see limited and brutish peopledoing cruel and stupid things? I suppose there are two answers. One, because such things exist in the world andsome of us are curious about them as we are curious in general about human nature. Two, because an artist isnever merely a reporter and by seeing the tragedy through his eyes, he helps us to see it through ours.

"River's Edge" was directed by Tim Hunter, who made "Tex," about ordinary teenagers who found themselvesfaced with the choice of dealing drugs. In "River's Edge," that choice has long since been made. These teenagersare alcoholics and drug abusers, including one whose mother is afraid he is stealing her marijuana and a 12-year-old who blackmails the older kids for six-packs.

The central figure in the film is not the murderer, Sampson (Daniel Roebuck), a large, stolid youth who seemsperpetually puzzled about why he does anything. It is Layne (Crispin Glover), a strung-out, mercurial rebel whoalways seems to be on speed and who takes it upon himself to help conceal the crime. When his girlfriend askshim, like, well, gee, she was our friend and all, so shouldn't we feel bad, or something, his answer is that themurderer "had his reasons." What were they? The victim was talking back.

Glover's performance is electric. He's like a young Eric Roberts, and he carries around a constant sense of danger.Eventually, we realize the danger is born of paranoia; he is reflecting it at us with his fear.

These kids form a clique that exists outside the mainstream in their high school. They hang around outside,smoking and sneering. In town, they have a friend named Feck (Dennis Hopper), a drug dealer who lives inside alocked house and once killed a woman himself, so he has something in common with the kid, you see? It isanother of Hopper's possessed performances, done with sweat and the whites of his eyes.

"River's Edge" is not a film I will forget very soon. Its portrait of these adolescents is an exercise in despair. Noteven old enough to legally order a beer, they already are destroyed by alcohol and drugs, abandoned by parentswho also have lost hope. When the story of the dead girl first appeared in the papers, it seemed like a freak show,an aberration. "River's Edge" sets it in an ordinary town and makes it seem like just what the op-ed philosopherssaid: an emblem of breakdown. The girl's body eventually was discovered and buried. If you seek her monument,look around you.

★★★☇



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