The River Wild

In this excellent thriller, Meryl Streep takes her family white-water rafting to try to revive their disintegrating relationships. But what promises to be an enjoyable break soon turns into a nightmare when armed robbers Kevin Bacon and John C Reilly hitch a ride on their raft with $250,000 of stolen loot. Directed by Curtis Hanson, this is a terrific roller-coaster ride filled with hair-raising action scenes and some equally tense moments on the river bank. In a dramatic break from her usual roles, Streep is utterly convincing as the strong-willed wife and mother, taking charge as husband David Strathairn wimps out, and struggling to keep her head above water as the sinister Bacon and the wounded Reilly become distinctly unpleasant. Streep performed many of her own stunts (at one point she was thrown overboard and resurfaced 500 yards downstream where she was rescued by a kayak crew) and put in a lot of training for the role. Her muscles are as pumped-up as the plot, which is little more than a thrill machine, with added nuggets of political correctness about the family unit and sexual equality, but the incredible action and Streep's performance more than compensate for any shortcomings.

This tense family-therapy thriller doesn't produce any surprises, but sometimes, perhaps, it's enough just to go along... read more on Time Out