"River's Edge" (1986) was based on a true story that took place in 1981: a high school student murders his girlfriend and tells his friends at school about it; the group goes to view the body in the woods but they're so apathetic and spiritually bereft that no one informs the authorities and the body just lies there for a couple of days. Daniel Roebuck plays the lumbering murderer and his clueless friends are played by Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover and Ione Skye, amongst others; Dennis Hopper is on hand as an aged biker/hippie.
What struck me about the film was how much it reminded me of real life experiences, both as a youth growing up and also as an adult dealing with youths. Here are some of the things in the movie that I've also experienced:
- Kids as young as 11-13 obsessed with "partying." - The idolization of drugs (pot, pills, etc.) and the party lifestyle above all else. - Kids, that young and older, out all night doing whatever (partying, having sex, crime). - Parents who aren't much more than phantoms in their kid's lives and therefore allow such. - Older, crazy dudes that the youths sometimes hang with, get drugs from or look up to. - The group dynamics of such youths and the unwritten law of not being a "narc." - Killing a friend and leaving the body where it lies for a couple of days.
This was (and is) the downside of the 60's revolution -- a somewhat sad emptiness in people who have lost their innate moral compass with the passing of religious faith as they desperately search for meaning or cause in the new secular frontier (Layne's "cause" in the film is rigid loyalty to John, since he had "his reasons" for murdering the girl, and covering up his crime). Most of the characters are neither likable nor unlikable; they're just human beings trying to live and find meaning or fulfillment with the hand they've been dealt.
The film runs 99 minutes and was shot in California (Sacramento, La Crescenta and Los Angeles).
BOTTOM LINE: Glover steals the show with an over-the-top (yet believable) performance in a film that details the dark side of coming-of-age in modern America. It plays like a mid-80's version of Coppola's "The Outsiders" (1983), which was about early 60's youths; note, for instance, the seemingly incongruent melodramatic score (there's also a great metal soundtrack, but the songs are merely soundbites). People who have grown up in loving homes with positive role models & friends probably won't like "River's Edge." They'll likely think it's trash. However, those who grew up in the dysfunctional insanity depicted in the film understand it fully. And many of us are doing everything in our power to prevent our kids and other youths from experiencing it.
GRADE: B+
