Stoopid

Jake-5

OK, so get this -- the husband walks faster than the raft travels on the river. That means he gets ahead and sends smoke signals to his wife and son who have been raft-napped. Then he races ahead and constructs an elaborate underwater trap AND paints hand signs on a rock face explaining the plan to his wife. (And when he sees an unmanned canoe floating down the river, he says "Oh no" ominously, as if he knows exactly what happened to the canoe's onwer.) So, she maneuvers the raft into the exact spot for the trap, which flips the raft, tossing out only the bad guys. Then the husband manages to tip the giant raft again by hand. Meryl Streep shoots the bad guy with the gun that still works even after being repeatedly dunked in the water. And did I mention that the gun has conveniently fallen to a place on the river bed where she can stil see it?

Look, I can handle implausibility in my action movies, but there comes a point where implausible because ridiculous, and a point still after that where it becomes insulting. "The River Wild" is truly insulting.

score /10

Jake-5 21 May 2001

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0347407/