The teacher Gail Hartman (Meryl Streep) is facing problems with her marriage with her husband, the workaholic architect Tom Hartman (David Strathairn). On the birthday of their son Roarke (Joseph Mazzello), Gail decides to leave her daughter with her parents and take her family to raft down a wild river where she was a guide. On the departure, a young man named Wade (Kevin Bacon) befriends Roarke and leaves the place with his friends Terry (John C. Reilly) and Frank (William Lucking). Later the family encounters Wade and Terry, who do not have rafting experience, and Gail helps them to cross a whitewater. They get closer to the family and soon Gail and Tom learn a dark secret about Wade and Terry. What will they do to get rid of the men?Twenty-three years after its release date, "The River Wild" is still a breathtaking film. The story is predictable and corny in some moments, but the action scenes are still impressive. The forty-five year-old Meryl Streep is athletic and looks younger and younger. Unfortunately the DVD does not have making of since the scenes of white-river rafting are amazing. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "O Rio Selvagem" ("The Wild River")

I'll grant that the last 15 minutes or so of "The River Wild" are a pretty exciting and suspenseful white water rafting adventure. The unfortunate thing about it is that these are only the last 15 minutes or so. Up to that point what we have is a pretty slow moving river journey, with the added complication, of course, being that the troubled family on the trip finds more trouble as they pick up a couple of guys who robbed the local cattle auction. In the end the movie turns out to be pretty formulaic, with movements and plot points that we've definitely seen before - many times, in fact.Meryl Streep was an interesting choice as Gail - mother and white water guide - and while she was interesting (basically because this isn't what you'd think of as a normal Meryl Streep role) I didn't find her convincing in the part, either (which is probably why it's not a normal Meryl Streep role!) Kevin Bacon was somewhat more credible as Wade, the guy apparently in charge of the robbery, who decides to take the family hostage in order to use Gail's rafting expertise to run a particularly deadly river in the hopes of escaping the law. Along for the ride were David Strathairn as Gail's husband, John C. Reilly as Wade's sidekick and Joseph Mazzello as young Roarke, Gail's son.It's a decent enough cast. The story isn't especially original, though, and I just didn't find the movie to be all that exciting. Watching a rafting trip (which is essentially what we do for the bulk of this movie) with a few bits of drama thrown in as we become gradually more suspicious of the two strangers doesn't exactly make for a gripping two hours of viewing. There is, of course, the requisite ending as it seems that all the family's troubles are solved by having gone through this adventure together. (3/10)

I don't like films that make idiot of you - spectator, and this is one of that sort. The story is fine, the plot is dramatical, but all the other things are unbelievable - lot of luck for the family, lots of coincidences, and insoluble situations. What I mean:1, i don't know anything about guns but is it possible that a revolver squelched 15 times (at least:) is still able to shoot??2, how can a wounded man climb a mountain, then fall down from it, swim across quite wild river, run through thick forest to follow a pretty quick raft - all this without disinfectant and food and in his sopping clothes.. - and finally build a sophisticated trap! Well, great performance - but the man in the film was not Chuck Norris :-D3, was the ranger blind? he managed to find a small camera somewhere in mud and driftwood, but he didn't notice a cut-up raft.4, smoke signals must have been pretty secret! Seen only by mother and her child, not by villains.And so on.. Btw, in my opinion a 12-year-old child would end up with psychical trauma and nightmares after seeing a few murders in the flesh.Just one plus for the film: I don't know if it was camera, dramaturgy or good acting - from the very beginning I knew that there was something wrong with Wade, that he was bad. I didn't know anything about the film but I felt it'd be thriller :) The character was well performed i think. However, the film was another US junk.

This is a pretty good action adventure which is enhanced by the against-type casting of Meryl Streep as the woman who finds herself held hostage by a couple of robbers on the run while on a rafting family with her near-estranged husband and difficult son.Although Streep is good she is matched by David Strathairn as her city-type husband who initially looks so at odds with the outdoor setting simply by the way he moves - and even sits. He doesn't have any emotional scenes but still manages to superbly transmit his awkwardness with both his surroundings and a wife and son who are slipping away from him. And while Strathairn matches Streep, Bacon surpasses her as the initially charismatic Wade, one of a trio of criminals on the run after robbing a cattle market.The robbers, their numbers reduced by one after a spat, smoothly invite themselves to join the Hartman party and it isn't long before Wade is slyly exploiting the cracks he spies in the relationship between Tom (Strathairn) and his son Roarke (Joseph Mazzello). The film focuses as much on the psychological aspect of the interaction of the four main characters (John C. Reilly as Wade's sidekick is a bystander for the most part) as it does on the action scenes, which is probably why it was more enjoyable than the straightforward action pics Hollywood normally produces. Even the finale is as much about psychological cat-and-mouse games as action set-pieces - which isn't a bad thing in my book.