lathe-of-heaven Okay... The direction, cinematography, the mood, and the pacing were done brilliantly and were truly captivating. And, unlike other reviewers here, I REALLY like Edward Burns; I think he is a cool kat in the vein of a milder Ben Affleck (PLEASE, do yourself a HUGE favour and watch 'CONFIDENCE'; DAMN good film!!!) BUT... And it is a BIG BUT like Mariah Carey's... It just isn't that terribly imaginative or deep. So, if you like your films very simple and straight-forward, you might like it. HOWEVER... If, like me, you like to have a little more mystery, imagination, and flavour in your movies, the ending of this film will leave you flatter than Chaz Bono...The movie is very well made, but, anyone who enjoys a bit more mystery and other-worldly flavour in their films should steer away and watch something else, because it is highly likely the ending will greatly disappoint you.Thus the extreme disparity and polarized reviews of this film...

misbegotten A British/Canadian production based on a novel by Alice Hoffman, The River King is set during the depths of winter in a small American town dominated by a prestigious university, which funds most of the local economy. When a student is found dead in a frozen river by a uniformed patrolman (played by Edward Burns), he assumes a routine investigation will follow, to establish whether the boy's death was an accident, suicide or due to foul play. However, the university - fearful of a scandal and/or bad publicity - pressurises the local coroner and Burns' police colleagues into immediately declaring that it was suicide. Disquieted by events, Burns proceeds to unofficially investigate the student's death in his own time, and after finding himself confronted by a wall of silence, he starts receiving clues from an apparently supernatural source.The River King is simply a beautifully shot film, and boasts a wonderfully touching and insightful performance from Rachelle Lefevre as the dead student's best friend. The final revelation about what happened on the night the boy died is quietly devastating.

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.

Robert J. Maxwell This deliberate mystery about the death of a young man at an exclusive boy's school is surprisingly good. Edward Burns is a local police officer who suspects that foul play was involved. The body was found drowned in the local ice-laden river but his lungs contained traces of things found in toilet bowls. Was it a hazing accident? Well -- close but no cigar.Burns' investigation must struggle through a thicket of opposition. His colleagues don't want to push the matter because the Haddon School is their benefactor. The school, with its frigid headmaster, isn't interested in probing too deeply because, well, after all -- foul play at Haddon? Burns himself is impelled mainly because he once helped his older brother commit suicide and perhaps, in solving the riddle of this case, he can partly redeem himself. Along the way, he spends a good deal of time with the dead boy's girl friend, a frizzy red head. And he meets and makes love to Jennifer Ehle, a blond photographer who is about to wed someone else. In the end, Burns, having found out the answer, decides that disclosure isn't necessary and certainly won't promote anyone's happiness, so he invents an explanation that absolves everyone of guilt.The performances are all good, mostly from unfamiliar performers. Rachel Lefevre is the dead student's girl friend, not exactly gorgeous, plump-lipped and long-haired and sturdy looking, but she's quite attractive in an everyday way. Jennifer Ehle as the slightly whimsical photographer is Meryl Streepish and her romance with Burns isn't in the least convincing. Burns is rather good. He's a fine actor, and a fine actor without the brutish charm of a Johnny Depp or a Brad Pitt. His voice is high and it cracks often. Its most important feature is that it sounds believable. If Burns himself is particularly handsome, the fact was beyond my grasp, but I hope not. If he gets the applause he deserves, it would be cheapened a little if he were a heart throb. WILL KEN DITCH JENNIFER? I can see him in the tabloids now. But with any luck he'll be no more supermarket fodder than Anthony Hopkins or Ian McKellar.If there's a problem with the film it's that it's a little TOO deliberate. And it swings from one sub-plot to another and back again and sideways, like a simple harmonic oscillator, just passing through the central story line from time to time. There are moments when it's entirely possible to forget what the movie is about.Partly because any viewer is likely to be distracted by the gorgeous, wintry Nova Scotia settings. At time the snow is blue or yellow and seems to have leaped straight out of a post-impressionist painting. The small-town streets are choked with drifts and the village itself, which ought to be pretty dismal, looks more like a vacation snapshot. Rarely has a winter landscape had such luster.One of the qualities that makes it so easy to recommend this is that it's made for adults -- or, more precisely, for people with an attention span that hasn't been cut off at the knees by MTV and commercials and glitzy news sound bites. You have to settle back to watch it, fold your hands behind your head, relax, and sort of slit your eyes slightly.