River’s Edge

In the age of Reagan, to “just say no” meant to relinquish that minute, but powerful act of just saying yes. At least this seemed true for a generation of teenagers whose only expression of power came from consuming taboo experience in a world of dead nerve-endings. Director Tim Hunter draws on the true story of a sixteen-year-old Milpitas student who strangles his fourteen-year-old girlfriend, taking us inside a morbid brat pack whose members include Crispin Glover, Keanu Reeves, and Ione Skye. Dennis Hopper brings a kind of psycho ethic to the film, asking the young killer, “But did you love her, man?”