River's Edge (1986)

Peter's nite

Janet Maslin in the New York Times:

As he demonstrated in ''Tex,'' Mr. Hunter has an extraordinarily clear understanding of teen-age characters, especially those who must find their own paths without much parental supervision. But the S. E. Hinton story for that film is a great deal more innocent than this one, and a lot more easily understood. While Mr. Hunter retains his ear for adolescent dialogue (the screenplay is by Neal Jiminez) and his eye for the aimless, restless behavior of these characters, neither he nor we can easily make the necessary leap to understand their casualness about Samson's crime. That Mr. Hunter is brave enough to avoid easy moralizing and easy explanations finally makes his film harder to fathom.

Much of ''River's Edge'' - which is based on several actual incidents, especially one in Northern California - is acted with utter conviction by a fine and largely unknown young cast. But the uncertain conceptions of a few key characters are damaging, especially that of Layne, who in his confusion becomes Samson's accomplice. Layne thinks himself more daring than his classmates, and without question he is more stoned. That leads him to conclude that loyalty to Samson is the only practical option. Samson and Jamie were both friends, he reasons, but it is Samson who's still alive and needs support. This is the film's key moral position, but it is explicated cartoonishly by Crispin Glover, who makes Layne a larger-than-life caricature and creates a noisy, comic impersonation instead of a lifelike character. Nor does it help that one of the film's other moral polarities comes from a 60's-minded, hipper-than-thou schoolteacher who declares, ''We took to the streets and made a difference!'' To his bored, jaded 80's high-school students, this kind of self-righteousness makes no sense at all.

Most of the performances are as natural and credible as the ones in ''Tex,'' with Mr. Roebuck a sad and helpless figure as Samson, and Keanu Reeves affecting and sympathetic as Tim's older brother; a different kind of generation gap already exists between these two, and the threat of fratricide between them leads to the film's most frightening confrontation. The ravishing Ione Skye Leitch (daughter of the singer Donovan) seems convincingly troubled as the character who must wonder why she feels more watching television tragedies than she does about her dead friend. And Mr. Hopper, whose scenes with the party doll ought to be thoroughly ridiculous, once again makes himself a very powerful presence. For better or worse, Mr. Hopper is back with a vengeance.

Crispin Glover via MTV:

"Personally, there are three [of my] films I like on the whole as films. ... 'The Orkly Kid,' which was a short film I made at [the American Film Institute] when I was 19, 'River's Edge,' which I think is an excellent movie, and 'What Is It?,' which I made. ... There was a reshowing of 'River's Edge' at one point in time, and [writer Neal Jimenez] said to the audience, 'When I first saw "River's Edge," I thought Crispin had ruined the film. But now, I feel like he ultimately made the film.' "

NYT on Neal Jimenez:

By the time the screenwriter Neal Jimenez had reached his mid-20's, his career seemed golden. A script that he had written in film school for what would become the well-received "River's Edge" was set for production. Agents and studios swarmed around dangling job offers even before he graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles.On a personal level, Mr. Jimenez's life was more complicated. He was having a serious affair with a married woman who was considering leaving her husband.

Then one night in July 1984, while on a camping trip near Sacramento, he slipped and fell into a shallow lake, breaking his neck. Within days, Mr. Jimenez, now without the use of his legs, was wheeled on his back into a rehabilitation center, where he found himself surrounded by other patients with similar injuries. His life, he felt, was as shattered as his spine.Mr. Jimenez, now a 31-year-old paraplegic, has drawn upon his experiences at the center to create "The Waterdance," which opens Wednesday. The film, written and co-directed by Mr. Jimenez, won an award as the most popular film at the Sundance Film Festival in March and also received the festival's prestigious Waldo Salt screenwriting prize. Its co-director is Michael Steinberg, a film maker and friend of Mr. Jimenez's since student days, who was brought into the project to add his personal perspective and, since Mr. Jimenez had never directed before, to help with technical matters.