BEFORE: And it's an easy leap to link from "The Clearing", since Robert Redford was also in "Out of Africa" with Meryl Streep (last seen in "The Manchurian Candidate". I did a large chain of Streep films two years ago, so it's not too surprising that this is the first film of 2013 to feature her.
THE PLOT: A rafting expert takes on a pair of armed killers while navigating a spectacularly violent river.
AFTER: A pretty exciting one tonight, my rating is mostly based on the amount of action, which I was quite satisfied with. I'm not really an outdoorsy kind of guy - my two experiences camping were complete disasters. Plus I wasn't encouraged (allowed) to play sports as a kid, since my mother is one of those "worst-case scenario" types. If I played football, I was going to break my glasses or an arm or something - Mom was always vague on specifics but just knew no good could come of it. She also praised me for having flat feet, since she thought that would keep me out of military service - she was probably correct, at least according to the standards of the 1940's.
Anyway, white-water rafting is something I would never consider doing, because eventually I learned to predict worst-case scenarios too, so if I went rafting I'm quite sure I would drown or hit my head on a rock. On our recent cruise, my wife and I went on excursions at the various ports of call, most of which involved getting on a bus and being shown around a market. Ziplining over the jungles of Costa Rica? No thanks. I couldn't even go too far into a limestone cave in Curacao, because I was convinced that even though the cave had been solid for thousands of years, today was going to be the day they decided to collapse. So I excused myself from the tour while I could still see daylight, and went down to the snack bar. And the other people on the tour had no idea I had just saved their lives by removing myself from the scenario.
It's not that I consider myself unlucky, it's just that once I envision the worst thing that could happen, I tend to focus on it, and start looking for a way to prevent it, even if that means missing out on a unique experience. (What if there HAD been a cave-in? Wouldn't I have looked really smart?)
Right, the film. It's not really a heist film, but it depicts a group of robbers who figured out a way to elude the law - instead of escaping by plane or train or fast car, they chose to hire a rafting guide, and flee the scene real slow-like. After a few days of rafting, they'd surface a few hundred miles away, and make off with the loot. I like the reasoning. But things go wrong, as they tend to do, and they're forced to terrorize the family of a rafting guide, the only person who's successfully navigated a bad stretch of river known as "the gauntlet".
It's gripping and all, but I think it perhaps should have come with a warning - I'm home sick today with either the stomach flu or mild food poisoning, and watching the rafts bob up and down on the water sure didn't help me out. Today I watched a bunch of episodes of a new show, "My Crazy Obsession" on TLC. These are people who have strange collections, like large amounts of mannequins, or enjoy dressing up like a merman. My crazy obsession, however, deals with organizing, so I'm wondering why they would put the guy who collects mustard on the same show with the guy who collects ketchup, but not put the Barbie doll collector on the same show with the Raggedy Ann collector, or the woman with the pet rats on the same show with the woman who has a pet squirrel. That boggles my mind.
That wraps up April movies, which stretched from "Mulholland Falls" to "The River Wild" (nice!) and it sets me up perfectly for the new chain, which concerns serial killers. Funny how there's a new show about them that also stars one of tonight's actors.
Also starring Kevin Bacon (last seen in "Crazy, Stupid, Love."), David Strathairn (last seen in "Memphis Belle"), John C. Reilly (last seen in "Cedar Rapids"), Benjamin Bratt (last seen in "Red Planet").
RATING: 6 out of 10 lifejackets
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