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")

Curtis Hanson directed this exciting thriller that stars Meryl Streep and David Strathairn as Gail and Tom Hartman, who are taking their son with them on a white water river rafting trip in the mountains while on vacation. Gail is the real expert rafter, which will come in handy as they are intercepted by two men named Wade and Terry(played by Kevin Bacon and John C. Reilly) who at first pretend to simply be lost and inexperienced rafters. Wade even bonds with their son to an extent, and appears charming to Gail, but they are both really crooks who kidnap them at gunpoint and force Gail to lead them over the rapids, where they will meet up with their accomplices. How can Gail get them out of this mess? Good film with solid direction and performances, especially Streep and Bacon. May not be entirely original, even routine, but so skillfully presented it doesn't matter.

For a conventional Hollywood adventure story, THE RIVER WILD isn't bad at all. While it lacks the rawness of similarly-themed independent fare and the kind of twists and surprises you'd expect from the best this genre has to offer, it tells the story it sets out to tell with a large amount of success, mainly thanks to the lean script and no-nonsense pacing. Much of the action comes from a series of spectacular white-water rafting sequences in which the stunt team are really put through their paces. These mark the film's highlight. The human plot, involving a couple of hostage-takers, is less spectacular, but the film still gets by thanks to the calibre of the cast.Meryl Streep, although a little too earnest in some places for my liking, takes plaudits as the outdoors expert who has to use her wits to survive both nature and the evils of mankind. Kevin Bacon and John C. Reilly are fine as the no-good criminals, and Benjamin Bratt bags a nice little role as a good-guy ranger. Youngster Joe Mazzello is a more mature presence than in the previous year's JURASSIC PARK, and David Straithairn (THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM) gets to have some fun as the straight-laced father forced into becoming a hero. Okay, so you know the outcome from the outset (and in a 12-certificate family adventure nothing THAT bad is ever going to happen), but this is nonetheless a mildly entertaining little movie.

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.