Vomitron_G The first time I saw this one, a few years ago on a Brussels film festival, I thought it was pretty good. Upon a recent re-watch, it got even better. This isn't really a horror movie, so don't be mislead or anything. It's more like a mystery(whodunit)-drama with a touch of the supernatural. It was fun re-watching it because now I've noticed a few other things (like some clues that were given). The movie's pace is very slow, but that didn't translate to 'being boring', more like intriguing instead. The cinematography is absolutely beautiful and the musical score is excellent. I expected no less, because this is a film by Nick Willing ("Hypnotic aka Doctor Sleep" & "Photographing Fairies").A boy in his late teens is found dead in the frozen river. Abel Grey (Edward Burns) starts to investigate and the trail leads him to a prestigious school with an exclusive student club. A lot of subplots occur and I didn't even mind that some of them don't really lead anywhere. They were rather interesting and provided some nice insights to several characters. The main storyline is of course the investigation of the accidental death/murder/suicide of the teenager. Parallel with that investigation, detective Grey comes to terms with a hidden trauma from his past involving the death of his brother. It is connected in more ways with the current investigation than only the outcome of the investigation. So "The River King" is a pretty clever movie, which works on many levels. What it lacks in suspense, it compensates in atmosphere.

robert-temple-1 This film is a highly superior offering from a British director of a film made in Canada, apparently Nova Scotia, during a relentless winter with heavy snow. The evocation of a haunting atmosphere from those dramatic settings is brilliantly done, and helps make this moody piece even more brooding, melancholy, and tantalising. The director is Nick Willing, best known for his magical 'Photographing Fairies' (1997), and rarely allowed to make the transition from television to features, for reasons unknown, as he has so much talent. A very strong performance by Ed Burns gives this film just the bone structure it needs, as he is perfectly cast as a bewildered but determined small time cop faced with a mysterious death of a boy which evokes his own demons of his older brother's suicide. The script by David Kane is strangely minimalist, with dialogue often consisting of rows of three dots. I don't know how this could have been filmed without the director telling the actors what to signify during all the silences, which they do excellently, so that the film almost becomes a silent movie at times. This is facilitated by the superior abilities of Jennifer Ehle, who for years has been one of the leading lights of top quality British TV drama, and who conveys enough mystery and ambivalence with her every expression to be perfect for suggestive thrillers like this. The kids at boarding school give strong performances, and are all Canadians. Rachelle Lefevre is multi-layered as the girl Carlin, and must be as ambivalent and mysterious as Ehle for different reasons. Thomas Gibson is compelling as the ill-fated boy around whom the story revolves, and Jamie Thomas King manages to be Mister Nasty Boarding School Bully with appropriate sneers and arrogance, which chill the spine, and one really can believe him to be capable of murder. The story is was a boy killed, did he kill himself, or did he die by accident? And buried deep in the background, but surfacing more towards the end, is the cop with the troubled past. He is surrounded by completely corrupt colleagues on the local police force who are all taking payoffs from the expensive boarding school to cover up the grisly events. It all works extremely well, is gripping, moody, and well-crafted, and has a haunting after-taste.

mgreener-1 I like Burns, he does all he can with this part. But, I detest movies with no conclusion, and this one is one of those. You could leave at any time, and know as much as those of us dumb enough to stick it out to the end.Great visuals, good music. Beautiful winter scenes. A couple of nasty guys who you'd like to see put in their place. A nice Streep-clone girlie figure. She's engaged to one of they nasty guys. But, why is she in the story at all? Even a ghost is thrown into the cast.Odd love scenes .... he and she are just talking, then suddenly sucking face like they were magnetized. When they pull apart, you almost miss the "plop" sound from cartoons. They swear off each other, agree to call it quits, and then get right back to swapping spit.I can see why this went straight to DVD .... somebody had the brains to save the distribution and promO costs, and cut their losses.

meeza "The River King" was not much of a king at the box office probably because there was no box office. It was because it went straight to DVD. Unfortunately, its play at some of the Canada film festivals was not enough for distributors to deep into their pockets to circulate "The River King" to theatrical releases. I could see why! The film is like your basic ABC Sunday Night Movie of the Week (they still have that?). Ed Burns stars as Abel Grey, a northern small-town detective who gets unraveled in a death of a young college boy. The young lad's death was called a suicide even though Grey sees it in more "Shades of Grey" and thinks it more as a homicide. Abel also has issues with his brother Cain! Wait! This is not a religious epic! What I meant to say that Grey is also dramatized by the childhood experience of witnessing his older brother commit suicide. Could the two be connected? Director Nick Willing did a formidable job in depicting the northern small town experience. However, Willing was not willing to push the envelope and provide us a more thought-provoking narrative. I am an avid fan of Burns , but I do not think that the Northern cop thing suits Eddie. It was a cold decision for him to take this role. You will love the northern exposure of "The River King" but the murder mystery aspects will drown you with boredom. *** Average