The River Niger

Over the years I missed viewing this film and was extremely surprised at the great acting by the entire cast. I remembered that this film was created from a Tony Award winning off Broadway hit play and its deep look into the African American community in the 1970's. James Earl Jones,(Johnny Williams) is a house painter and has an extra hobby writing poetry. Cicely Tyson,(Mattie Williams) plays the wife of Johnny and tries to do her very best to work and keep the family from going down under during rough times and poverty all around them. Louis Gossett,Jr., (Dr. Dudley Stanton), is a very good friend to Johnny and helps him out financially when he spends all his income on booze and can't make the house payments. Super stars, Lou Gossett and Earl Jones make this a classic film and worth every minute of your time to view this film.

I love James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson as a couple. They live in the ghetto or slums of Los Angeles, California in the 1970s. The rest of the cast includes the under-used Hilda Haynes and Louis Gosset Jr. The story of Johnny Williams as a poet and his ill wife played by Tyson is not so bad and their surroundings are undesirable as they battle crime, gangs, violence, and living in a tough part of the city. Jones and Tyson are a formidable pair and strong together on screen and they are worth watching the film alone even if it's not that great on paper. JOnes's performance elevates the role into a complex character of JOhnny Williams and there are familiar actors and actresses also in this film. The River Niger might not be that great but it's not that bad and Tyson and Jones are so strong together that you can see them at odds as well. Johnny loves his wife, Mattie, and strives as a poet but the scene where he reads to Mattie is heartbreaking, emotional, and worth watching. I didn't care for the other scenes involving the gangs, violence, and crime. I just loved watching Tyson and JOnes as a couple.

"The River Niger" is very much a time capsule of the mid-1970s. There's a lot of good acting, some bad acting, and some pretty much middle of the road direction. The director, Krishna Shah, is probably the main thing which keeps this good film from being great. He just doesn't have a real vision for this sort of thing. As you might expect from a stage adaptation, Joseph A. Walker's script is why this is worth watching. He writes excellent dialogue, characters, and best of all - poetry. Then again, there's a bit too much emphasis on the self-conscious black identity stuff, even for 1976.

James Earl Jones, who plays the poet, is the best thing about "The River Niger". He is very compelling, intense, and instantly likable. His performance, along with that of Louis Gossett Jr. (credited here as Lou Gossett), makes one wish there was a better made film to frame it. Definitely worth seeing, though.

This film was a definite "okay". It didn't have the impact that many films would have with such a topic. But, the general idea was there and that's what was so important. The vast difference between James Earl Jones being a drunk bum, to a philosophical poet speaking of something as beautiful as the Niger River. He was brilliant of course. Not as well as "Finder's Fee", but that really can't be beat. Big nods to the other actors and writers trying their hardest to make a serious film during the famous black exploitation era. You have to appreciate that aspect of the film. Krishan Shan does deserve credit but, not fantastic.........................................the end

1st watched 9/30/2022 - (Dir-Krishna Shah): Heavy-handed drama about a son returning from his stint in the airforce to try and have a normal life. The movie starts by introducing the family & friends of the man, played by Glynn Turman. His dad, played by James Earl Jones, is a drunk with a heart for poetry and his family. His dad's best friend and family doctor, played by Lou Gossett. The mother, played by Cicely Tyson, and a new entry; the son's fiancee, arrives at the house and is welcomed by the group. These festivities are abruptly interrupted by the arrival of the gang that the soldier was associated with before he went into the air force. The rock of the group, the mother, gets ill and it puts a damper on the family and the returning son, Jeff --- who wants to become a lawyer, but the in-ability to get work pulls him back into helping the gang with their revolution against the white world. This movie shows the reality of black life during the time, but has so many storylines that never get resolved. I guess it may be the point of the story, based on a tony-award winning play - but not showing the audience any real answers doesn't help the movie. Cicely's character keeps a positive spin up to the end, but we really don't know why, and an abrupt non-positive non-climatic ending doesn't help it's cause either. A historic movie in the sense that it's based on an all African-American play but just doesn't sit well, for the most part.