Long before he was turning heads and receiving Oscar nominations for dismantling bombs in Iraq (The Hurt Locker) or playing Ben Affleck’s trigger-happy sidekick (The Town), Jeremy Renner was honing his craft with character roles alongside some of Hollywood’s most elite. Among these include roles with Charlize Theron (North Country), Brad Pitt (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), and Forest Whitaker in 2005’s A Little Trip to Heaven.
Although I had never heard of 2004’s The River King, the DVD case piqued my interest when I saw it in the under-$5 bin at Walmart one day. I purchased the movie, but it sat on my shelf for a couple of years before I picked it up again when looking for something to watch. The case has piqued my interest once again. The movie hooked me within its first five minutes. While this was not a great movie, it was worth watching. The opening scene’s setting—a dead body discovered buried underneath a transparent sheet of ice in a narrow, winding river in the midst of a desolate forest in the depths of winter—was perfectly captured by director Nick Willing.
Long before he was turning heads and receiving Oscar nominations for dismantling bombs in Iraq (The Hurt Locker) or playing Ben Affleck’s trigger-happy sidekick (The Town), Jeremy Renner was honing his craft with character roles alongside some of Hollywood’s most elite. Among these include roles with Charlize Theron (North Country), Brad Pitt (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), and Forest Whitaker in 2005’s A Little Trip to Heaven.
