White Mile

1994 gave us two white water rafting movie experiences: The River Wild and White Mile. Which one is better? They're both great in their own way. The River Wild is an action/thriller while White Mile is more of a drama/thriller. White Mile is a sadder, heavier story. It feels very realistic, almost like watching an actual real life disaster unfolding. I found this specific getaway gone wrong scenario, and the toxic workplace environment element relatable in some hard ways. Going down river rapids outside of a raft is terrifying. To a degree, I knew personally this fear portrayed by these characters. The latter third of this movie is an interesting and emotional court room drama. The characters go back and forth about what is morally right in the aftermath of the tragedy. Alan Alda and Peter Gallagher lead a strong cast of quality actors. They bring the drama and their characters teach us some important lessons. Alda especially nails his role as a conceited, bully of a boss. There is depth here and a heaviness which is successfully conveyed to the viewers.

Combining the best elements of adventure, suspense, character study AND courtroom drama, "White Mile" is a smart and engrossing film, made all the more fascinating due to the fact that it's (at least partially) based on true events. Alan Alda gives an astonishing performance as Dan Cutler, a hard-assed, unsympathetic ad executive who, convinced that his underlings have lost their competitive edge in the business, bullies them (along with a couple of their clients) into going on a whitewater rafting trip. Tragedy strikes the group on their outing, and when the details of the accident look like they may be swept under the rug and dismissed, one of the men who survived (Peter Gallagher, also very fine)decides to come forth and tell the truth when Cutler and the company are sued by the wife of one of the deceased.

If you only know Alda from his days as the nice-guy Hawkeye on "M*A*S*H," he's sure to surprise you here with his intense, tightly-wound portrayal. Expertly filmed by veteran director Robert Butler, "White Mile" is riveting all the way. Excellent, atmospheric score by Pray For Rain. Not to be missed! ****stars

The streaming service Max recently came to Australia after 512 years of waiting, and I was looking through what it had. I mean, it's great if you want to watch most HBO shows, but definitely not all HBO shows (most stuff pre-Sopranos, including Oz and The Larry Sanders Show? Fuggedaboutit). If you want to watch older movies, it's pretty bad. All the ones they have are the sorts most avid film watchers will have already seen, or even own copies of.

But they had White Mile, which I'd never heard of. It turns out it's obscure because it's a TV movie, and a very average one, but the idea of a white-water rafting trip going wrong sounded intriguing, and I like Alan Alda, so I thought, what the heck.

My life has not been made any better or worse by having sat through White Mile. It is a TV movie. It's about workplace imbalances, then it's about the trip going wrong, and then it's a courtroom drama. It doesn't so anything of these things terribly, and it doesn't do any of these things particularly well. White Mile is a TV movie.

Lackluster. A lot of notability actors that didn't have anything better to do at the time.

Alan Alda is quite effective as a callous, driven head of an advertising agency who in a quest to strengthen the bond between his employees and their clients goes overboard (sic!) with a team-building rafting trip to Chilko River in British Columbia, Canada. Despite typical 1990s TV movie production values, the film offers some intense and complex psychological drama, especially in the final third. And the strong cast give performances that become increasingly effective as the film progresses. Both Alan Alda and the film itself were nominated for Golden Globe awards in the "Made for Television" sub-category.