River Street (1996) Online

River Street would without a doubt be one of those feel good movies. yet i think that this great film, a film that seems to have been unnoticed by the movie going public on the whole. River Street sends the message that what you want to be is not necessity what you actually and that it is possible to find love in some of the most unexpected places. basically the plot is that Ben an ambitious Real estate agent who is going to marry the boss' daughter and that he has been given the deal of a life time being that he was offered a %50 stake in a real estate deal and all he has to do is attend the auction. Yet everything goes wrong and he is sentenced to 100 hours community service at the River Street Drop in centre.

This movie has the makings of quite a good tragedy. The main character has a fatal flaw which is greed, and this fatal flaw drags him down to a point where he dies. We watch as the main character struggles with his greed and his compassion and how these two opposing forces work to drive his friends away, and even killing them. We are given a glimpse of the end at the beginning and thus we can see where he is headed. Unfortunately, this movie does not come out as a tragedy but as a B-grade Australian drama.

The first criticism involves the beginning. We are shown that he drowns when he car is pushed into a river. This helps us keep in mind that he is destined to die. Unfortunately, this does not really add anything to the movie. The entire tragedy of the situation could have been composed without even needing to reveal the end to the audience. This is a technique that should be used sparingly and when used improperly, such as in this case, can spoil the movie.

In most cases a tragedy has the main character finishing off dead or defeated. We watch as the character's fatal flaw slowly rips apart his life until there is nothing left. This can be seen in River Street for the main character's greed and ambition has him lying and cheating and selling out his friends and innocent people. The main character is in control of the events and when that is the case, the tragedy has much more of an impact, for the tragic hero has nobody to blame but him or herself. This is not the case in River Street, for though in the later part of the movie, the main character is very much in control, he is not in the beginning. A mixture of luck and some almost unbelievable events occur to place him in the situation that causes him to fall. Moreso, it is the fortuitous events that start his fall and thus this softens the impact of the tragedy.

Yet, River Street is not a tragedy for he survives. The filmmakers wrote into the movie a way that enabled him to escape from his death, even though he should have been dead. Not only that, a friend of mine kept on saying, "wind down the window!" where as the main character tried to break it. After he had escaped, the woman that he really wanted, the one who had rejected him because of his avarice nature, came running to him and professed her undying love. Sickening if I say so myself.

River Street does raise some interesting ideas about the contrast between the rich and the poor and even attacks the attitude of the rich to the unfortunate that do not have everything. Even so, this movie, which could have left a strong message, becomes nothing more than a simple drama with a happy ending. The movie really left me with nothing and would probably be a waste of other people's time as well. The only reason that I saw it was because I had no choice, I was on a bus between Sydney and Adelaide and this was one of the movies they showed.