‘River Runs Red’ Wastes A Chance To Be Important

River Runs Red is about a prominent judge named Charles Coleman (Taye Diggs from “Empire”) who is proud of his son, C.J. (Joseph Belk from Prayer Never Fails), for being admitted into the police academy. Before C.J. can report for duty, however, he is unceremoniously killed by a pair of trigger-happy cops (Luke Hemsworth from “Westworld” and Kill Me Three Times and Gianni Capaldi from “Feel the Dead”) during an unjust traffic stop. Of course, the internal police investigation finds the officers were not at fault, but Charles’ buddy, a rogue detective named Horace (Love & Mercy’s John Cusack), uncovers evidence to the contrary: These two officers have done this before. Charles tracks down the father of the other victim, a mechanic named Javier (comedian George Lopez from “Lopez Tonight”), and the two grieving dads go out for some old-fashioned street justice.

To say that River Runs Red is a timely movie would be an understatement in a day and age where African Americans are having the police called on them for simply living their lives and young black men are being killed by cops no matter how closely they follow the officer’s instructions. The setup is seemingly ripped from today’s headlines. Unfortunately, Writer/Director Wes Miller (Lily Grace: A Witch Story) doesn’t take full advantage of the topicality, instead opting to turn his movie into a paint-by-numbers action-revenge flick.

River Runs Red feels like it doesn’t really want to be a controversial movie with a social message, but it accidentally gets thrown into the political realm without even trying. Taye Diggs and George Lopez are not your typical action movie stars, but neither gives a sympathetic enough performance to generate any empathy with the audience. In short, no one cares about these fathers, so there’s no emotional investment in their quest for justice.

Wes Miller also commits the cardinal sin of trying to make the viewer feel sorry for one of the offending police officers, a sidebar that fails miserably. Hemsworth’s cop is the more likable of the two antagonists, and he basically plays follow-the-leader. But, just as social justice warriors have little sympathy for the good cops that don’t hold the bad ones accountable, Hemsworth’s “wrong place wrong time” act falls on deaf ears. Trying to make him relatable just winds up ensuring that the audience doesn’t care about a single character in the film, whether they’re perceived as a hero or a villain.

Essentially, the biggest fault of River Runs Red is its case of schizophrenia. It wants to be a serious crime drama, but ends up as a macho action movie. And that’s a mixed result, because it squanders a chance to become an important, socially conscious movie, but winds up doing what it does best fairly admirably: kicking ass and taking names.