“The River King”

Here’s a film based on a novel by Alice Hoffman. It stars Ed Burns, who came to notoriety by financing, writing, directing and producing the indie hit “The Brothers McMullen” while he was still a gofer at Entertainment Tonight. Since then, he’s worked pretty steadily in both movies and television, juggling personal projects with work-for-hire gigs (most notably “Saving Private Ryan”). His supporting cast here is a mix of actors from both films and television, including many from Canada (where it appears this film was shot).

This is a “police procedural” with Burns cast as the lead investigating a student’s drowning in a river. This leads to several questions: Was it murder? Suicide? Accidental? Is Burns’ work here merely a dry run for a potentially inevitable stint on one of the many “Law & Order” incarnations? And how can this movie possibly be directed by the same man (Nick Willing) who brought us such disparate entries as the teen sex romp “Road Trip” and the befuddling TV mini-series re-imagining of Oz called “Tin Man?”

Watching the trailer, I have to admit that this doesn’t seem to have the level of “badness” most Late Nite Landfill offerings have. Instead of badness there is a “sameness” evident here – I’m reminded of “The River’s Edge,” “Stand By Me,” “The Gift,” “In the Bedroom,” “Mystic River” and countless others with the dredging of waters to uncover corpses, or tracking the trail in the woods, or both. It also has the elements of “secret societies” and “secret pacts” as seen in “The Skulls,” “Murder by Numbers,” “Scream,” and the little seen Toni Collete vehicle, “Like Minds” (aka “Murderous Intent”), which I wouldn’t be surprised to see make its way to the Landfill at some point. Yes, a heaping helping of sameness, which may put this into the “average” category at best.

Earlier I mentioned the questions this story and movie bring to mind. Now I have a question this trailer brings to mind: why, oh why does the trailer have a horror movie style shock ending?

View the trailer here:



Or watch the entire movie on WABC-TV Channel 7 at 11:35 PM on Saturday, March 8th – if you dare!