_The River Wild_ reviewed by Cynthia Fuchs Meryl Streep in spandex jock-shorts. Here she is, muscled up, tough, in motion. Soon enough, she'll warrant last-name-only billing. (Imagine it: "Stallone.'' "Stone." "Streep.'') In the meantime, she's changing her image, sort of. She's still refined, still subtle, but here she's also blasting through big white water, battling a psycho-killer, and saving the free world. Or at least the free world as it's constituted in domestic stability. In fact, the basic premise resembles that of _True Lies_, without the fancy hardware. _The River Wild_ is inspired, the press kit says, by an article in _Fly, Rod & Reel_ magazine. Whatever that means. And it's actually pretty tame, featuring a standard action plot (villains threaten resourceful innocents) and dramatic scenery and stunts (lots of mountains, trees, and death-defying plunges through the rapids). Streep is Gail, a river guide in her adolescence, now a 40-something teacher, wife, and mother. Her marriage to an overworked, fidgety architect, Tom (David Strathairn) is on the rocks, and she arranges for a vacation so that the family (including Roarke [Joseph Mazello, recently menaced by dinosaurs in _Jurassic Park_]) can go rafting in the beautiful, soul-healing wilderness. The trip begins badly. Tom is late to arrive and reluctant to be there: he's ineffectual, insecure, passive, and rather uneasy on the raft (where the robust Gail is quite at home). As he struggles to finish this week's drawings, his wife and son wish out loud that he would join in their rugged fun. Meanwhile, evil forces are lurking. Specifically, at the start of the trip, Roarke befriends a vaguely scruffy, visibly spooky guy in a Lollapalooza cap, Wade (Kevin Bacon), who seems unusually interested in Gail. (Moral: don't trust those commercial- alternative-band types.) It's clear where this narrative is headed: the family will endure horrific hardships so that they and we will appreciate the fragility of family ties. Director Curtis Hanson, the ads have been reminding you, previously made _The Hand That Rocks the Cradle_: this would allow some movie-blurbish cheap shots (it's _The Hand That Rocks the Raft_, etc.). Still, the movie goes about its business efficiently, getting its principals deep into dangerous circumstances quickly, then terrorizing them for about an hour. The "wild'' river, in other words, is metaphorical as well as literal, and encompasses the pernicious fallout of "civilization'' as embodied by crafty schemer Wade and his lumpy-faced partner, Terry (John C. Reilly). Indeed, it's not long before these ruffians catch up with the family downriver and ask for assistance. At first, Gail, like her son, enjoys the attention from Wade, and Tom gets jealous (he'll end up being right to distrust these shady characters, according to the formula, where father knows better and mother should be less rambunctious). Granted, Wade does behave strangely: he smirkily insinuates himself into their couple-conflict, he has large-denomination bills on him, he leers at Gail. When they hear about a brutal local crime on the radio, Gail laughs out loud. This is, we learn, inappropriate behavior. Soon after, Wade makes points with Roarke, who's angry at his parents for being so preoccupied with their own problems, by revealing that he carries a gun. Once all the pieces become visible to Gail and Tom, they devise various, unsuccessful ways to escape from Wade and Terry, who take them hostage because they need Gail's expertise to get through the rapids known as "Little Niagra.'' Increasingly demonic Wade outsmarts them repeatedly, and as his rage becomes more apparent and out of control, Terry is obviously uncomfortable. Luckily, the family knows American Sign Language (Gail's father, we've learned through a brief meeting with him earlier, is deaf), so they can communicate more or less secretly. And they've got their dog Maggie--also a girl, we might note--with them (played by Buffy, who's listed fourth in the film's credits). Though Wade chases Maggie away by threatening to shoot her, she comes through with a series of _Fantastic Journey_-like surprise re-appearances. There's a certain campy thrill to these moments, and the audience around me was happy to play this recognition game, cheering her on whene she appeared on a nearby cliff, as if she were Schwarzenegger in dog drag. Not to put too fine a spin on it, but the central question prompted by _The River Wild_ has to do precisely with audiences and expectations. Everyone knows how the story goes because we've seen it before in a thousand variations, but more usually with men in the heroic, predictable, occasionally complex parts. The question then, is this: is the insertion of a woman in this kind of starring role a politically useful or emotionally satisfying intervention into these formulaic mechanics? _Thelma and Louise_ and the _Aliens_ triology, for famous instances, made similar moves, in that they offered gutsy women pressed to extreme reactions. Is it really news that women can also be pissed off, ingenious, violent, and vengeful (and *not* be villainous)? I suppose, in some viewing circles, it is. And there is a kind of kicky pay-off in this imagery, which is less that men should beware (though _Thelma and Louise_ instigated some public discussion - and anxiety - regarding this possibility), than the (novel?) idea that there are other ways to imagine what gender means. And yet this reimagining is more complicated and circuitous than Denis O'Neill's script allows. The notion lingers that to be "feminine" is to be weak and submissive and victimized. So, when Louise, Ripley, _Terminator_'s Sarah Connor and _NBK_'s Mallory get tough, it's because they've had enough of being "feminine.'' One popular reading of this turn of events is that these characters are "masculinized'' by their use of violence (not to mention their choice of weapons, often penetrating in some predictable way, or sharp plunging items). As Tina Weymouth (of the Tom-Tom Club) once sang, girls can do it too. So what? The casting of Streep in this film is an interesting response to *this* question. If her overt motivation is somewhat reductive here (she's a mother, as were Sarah and to an extent, Ripley), she offers, in her preformance, some potentially extenuating nuances. Streep is hard-bodied for sure, but she's not young, lithe, and limber, and packs no major firearms. Her Gail is erratic and makes mistakes (though of course, she also achieves a few rather incredible feats of derring-do, river-wise). This is Streep's special gift, she can do ordinary. Despite her most exquisite ethereal beauty - and it approaches madonna-ness on occasion - she has always been able to gesture toward everydayness. She's imperfect, difficult, not exactly transparent. In this very regular, occasionally tedious movie, she's lovely and - eventually - fierce, but she's also awkward, as if she's rather astonished to be here, beating on whackos with oars and aiming guns at their heads. On one level all of this leads back around to a profound non-question: the casting of women as well-intentioned, completely justified aggressors, of women in traditionally "male'' roles, does restage conventional power dynamics, with an easy-to-figure twist that doesn't dismantle the given system. But in another way, Streep's careful incarnation of confusion, anger, and some small measure of resistance at least *suggests* that the categories themselves - like "masculine'' and "feminine'' - are inadequate (I think Juliette Lewis' Mallory serves a similar function, but that's another topic). I'll add this: the movie, particularly the screenplay and often hokey images of her battling elements, works against Streep/Gail as vigorously as Wade does. For after whatever challenges to conventions Streep offers, the expected travails and the all-is-restored-to-its- proper-order finale are hopelessly retrograde. It was surely no surprise, but it was disappointing, even infuriating. Cynthia Fuchs teaches film and media studies at George Mason University. Copyright by Cynthia Fuchs. All rights reserved. Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the author. This review originally appeared in the Philadelphia _City Paper_.