Mark Rydell's River was the last and least of the trio of films, including Places in the Heart and Country, reflecting the suffering of America's small farmers during the early '80s as they were collectively chewed up by a few giant agribusinesses under the guiding hand of the Reagan administration. The film's by-the-numbers script runs through what had by then become familiar scenes of farmers struggling to hold on to their property without adding anything of substance. If anything, the script makes the subject more melodramatically unbelievable by piling obstacle after obstacle in the way of the completely isolated farmer Mel Gibson. It doesn't help that the characters of the three principals are little more than cardboard, or that Gibson doesn't quite fit as a native Tennessean alongside Sissy Spacek, who plays his wife, or Scott Glenn's local bank manager. The closest the film comes to showing some life is in the flirtation of the latter two after Spacek has become temporarily disenchanted with her husband.