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Dom Robinson reviews

The River Wild

The vacation is over.

Distributed by

Columbia TriStar

Cat.no: UDR 90019
Cert: 12
Running time: 107 minutes
Year: 1994
Pressing: 1999
Region(s): 2, PAL
Chapters: 16 plus extras
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Surround
Languages: 7 languages available
Subtitles: 7 languages available
Widescreen: 2.35:1
16:9-Enhanced: Yes
Macrovision: Yes
Disc Format: DVD 9
Price: £19.99
Extras : Scene index, Biographies, Filmographies, Production Notes

Director:

Curtis Hanson

Bad Influence, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, L.A. Confidential

Producers:

David Foster and Lawrence Turman

Screenplay:
Denis O'Neill

Music:

Jerry Goldsmith

Cast:

Gail: Meryl Streep

Before and After, Bridges of Madison County, A Cry in the Dark, Death Becomes Her, The Deer Hunter, Defending Your Life, The French Lieutenant's Woman, House of the Spirits, Kramer Vs. Kramer, Manhunter, Marvin's Room, Out of Africa, Plenty, Postcards from the Edge, She-Devil, Silkwood, Sophie's Choice

Wade: Kevin Bacon

Apollo 13, Criminal Law, Diner, A Few Good Men, Flatliners, Footloose, JFK, Murder in the First, National Lampoon's Animal House, Picture Perfect, Sleepers, Tremors

Tom: David Strathairn

Bob Roberts, A Dangerous Woman, Eight Men Out, The Firm, Home for the Holidays, L.A. Confidential, A League of their Own, Losing Isaiah, Lost in Yonkers, Memphis Belle, Mother Night, Passion Fish, Shadows and Fog, Silkwood, Sneakers, Stars and Bars

Roarke: Joseph Mazello

Jersey Girl, Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Presumed Innocent, Radio Flyer, Shadowlands, Three Wishes

Terry: John C. Reilly

Boogie Nights, Boys, Dolores Claiborne, Hard Eight, What's Eating Gilbert Grape ?

The River Wild stars Meryl Streep as one half of a marriage that's nearly on the rocks. In a bid to put it right she takes her son (Jurassic Park's Joseph Mazello) for a birthday treat on a white-water rafting trip with her overworked husband (David Strathairn). While out there, they encounter bad guys Wade (Kevin Bacon) and Terry (John C. Reilly) who end up putting them in a life-threatening situation.

Being a typical Hollywood film of good versus evil, it doesn't take you too long to work out how things will end, but it's a passable near-two hours of entertainment with some rather well-done rafting scenes leading to a film that's never boring and with a nice turn as the enemy from Bacon, but one that won't require constant re-watching.

The picture seems fairly free of artifacts although it has a light level of grain that only really shows up in the darker scenes and the colours look a little dull and flat, not the full brightness you'd expect from an outdoor film. The film is presented in its original widescreen ratio of 2.35:1 and is anamorphically-enhanced for 16:9 widescreen televisions which provides 33% higher resolution and the average bitrate is an extremely high 9.11Mb/s, maintaining a steady rate.

The sound has a fairly predictable score from Jerry Goldsmith - not his best but it does the job, with the good sound saved for the Gauntlet. This DVD comes complete with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound for the English soundtrack, unlike the PAL Laserdisc which could only accommodate a Dolby Surround one.

Extras :

Chapters :

16 chapters cover the 107 minutes of the film. Not too bad, but why do most of the back-catalogue Universal titles released through Columbia have to abide by the same number regardless of their length?

Languages and Subtitles :

Only English is available in Dolby Digital 5.1, while French, German, Italian, Spanish, Czech and Polish can be heard in Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround). Subtitles can be seen in English, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Danish.

Filmographies, Biographies and Production Notes:

Biographies with accompanying filmographies are available for Streep, Bacon, Strathairn, Mazzello and Reilly, plus director Curtis Hanson. A few pages of production notes give some background info on the film.

Menu :

Similar to the first batch of Universal releases, the menu is static and silent with a picture mirroring the cover on the main menu while other menus contain pictures of cast members. On playing the disc you see the Universal logo and a copyright message before the main menu appears.

The River Wild is Hollywood-by-numbers and a DVD that I'd recommend you rent before you buy, just to see if it's your sort of thing, since it's the type of film that you'll watch once in full, but on subsequent viewings you'll go straight to chapter 13 for where the action is.

In terms of extras, there's no more to be found on the Region 1 DVD than what's on here. For better films from Hanson, turn to either L.A. Confidential or Bad Influence.

FILM	 		: ***
PICTURE QUALITY		: ***½
SOUND QUALITY		: ***
EXTRAS			: *
-------------------------------
OVERALL			: **½

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999.

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