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.

The first time I saw this one, a few years ago on a Brussels film festival, I thought it was pretty good. Upon a recent re-watch, it got even better. This isn't really a horror movie, so don't be mislead or anything. It's more like a mystery(whodunit)-drama with a touch of the supernatural. It was fun re-watching it because now I've noticed a few other things (like some clues that were given). The movie's pace is very slow, but that didn't translate to 'being boring', more like intriguing instead. The cinematography is absolutely beautiful and the musical score is excellent. I expected no less, because this is a film by Nick Willing ("Hypnotic aka Doctor Sleep" & "Photographing Fairies").A boy in his late teens is found dead in the frozen river. Abel Grey (Edward Burns) starts to investigate and the trail leads him to a prestigious school with an exclusive student club. A lot of subplots occur and I didn't even mind that some of them don't really lead anywhere. They were rather interesting and provided some nice insights to several characters. The main storyline is of course the investigation of the accidental death/murder/suicide of the teenager. Parallel with that investigation, detective Grey comes to terms with a hidden trauma from his past involving the death of his brother. It is connected in more ways with the current investigation than only the outcome of the investigation. So "The River King" is a pretty clever movie, which works on many levels. What it lacks in suspense, it compensates in atmosphere.

A British/Canadian production based on a novel by Alice Hoffman, The River King is set during the depths of winter in a small American town dominated by a prestigious university, which funds most of the local economy. When a student is found dead in a frozen river by a uniformed patrolman (played by Edward Burns), he assumes a routine investigation will follow, to establish whether the boy's death was an accident, suicide or due to foul play. However, the university - fearful of a scandal and/or bad publicity - pressurises the local coroner and Burns' police colleagues into immediately declaring that it was suicide. Disquieted by events, Burns proceeds to unofficially investigate the student's death in his own time, and after finding himself confronted by a wall of silence, he starts receiving clues from an apparently supernatural source.The River King is simply a beautifully shot film, and boasts a wonderfully touching and insightful performance from Rachelle Lefevre as the dead student's best friend. The final revelation about what happened on the night the boy died is quietly devastating.

This movie has many problems. The acting is not great. It is slow. It does not develop the characters. And the plot is not interesting enough, nor developed enough.They never develop any of the characters, not even the main character Abe. They had many chances to develop his character, but instead just kept adding in trivial scenes. It feels as if they are trying to get "through" all of the book, instead of correctly editing it down to a good movie.Even the name of the movie has nothing really to do w/ the plot.Finally, Ed Burns was completely miscast. He is WAY too aristocratic to be a cop. Besides his accent is completely incorrect for the local, etc. And he can NOT disguise it.