Nine-year old boy is reunited with his estranged father in a northwest boom town in the midst of Gold Fever; they take off for a life of fishing and hunting but are soon railroaded by a crooked gambler and his gal, a saloon singer who gets a pang of conscience and stays with dad and the kid. Soon, all three are on the run from Injuns, on a raft down a treacherous river. Lackadaisical western puts action on the back-burner to focus on character interaction, which in this case isn't such a bad thing. Robert Mitchum never puts on a big show: tough and steely, but paternal towards the kid and easy with the lady, he's gruffly polite--and unapologetic about his behavior. Marilyn Monroe is such a drama queen, she can't deliver a simple monologue without twitching something (her eyes, her lips, her nostrils); she is lovely (and, in a singing scene outdoors with the boy, very natural),but one warms to her because she's Marilyn (her legend exceeds the worn material and her over-emphatic delivery). Otto Preminger directed, but this doesn't feel like a Preminger movie. There are no tart or prodding scenes, and the dangerous rapids excursions--and Indian rampages--are not staged for maximum impact. The Indians, armed with arrows, simply seem like bad shots, and the close-up sequences on the raft were obviously achieved in the studio. Still, the occasional on-location photography is breath-taking, and the three principles grow steadily on the audience as well as towards each other. Beautiful theme song is sung in versions by both Mitchum and Monroe. **1/2 from ****

This is a decent time-passer and not a lot more. In some ways, it's a pretty good film but in so many others it is only adequate at best. First let's discuss the good. Pairing Robert Mitchum with Marilyn Monroe actually worked pretty well. Mitchum's laid-back style and Monroe as a sexy but more human sort of character than she normally played made the casting decision pretty good. Monroe was quite beautiful but her makeup was definitely more under-stated. She also sang pretty well, though she did seem to sing an awful lot. Also the main story idea was very good and culminated in a wonderful showdown--with a terrific ending. The problem, though, is that the film sunk to the level of mediocrity due to it being pretty sloppy--with some ridiculous dialog sounding, at times--more like it belonged in a Film Noir flick, grainy rear-projection during the rafting scenes, a silly knife fight where both Mitchum's son and Monroe just stand there doing NOTHING as he's almost killed and many, many contrived situations to see Ms. Monroe take off her clothes. Most men in the audience didn't mind this, but after a while it made me laugh because it looked as if the writers deliberately inserted many such scenes! First, she is a barroom singer and she must naturally sing in her underwear, then when she's on the raft she gets so cold and wet that Mitchum tells her to take off her clothes when they take a break (though he and his young son were fine and kept theirs on) and when they were attacked by Indians, one grabbed Monroe's blouse and naturally it just tore away!!! I actually thought this was pretty funny.

Finally I'd like to point out that the print on videotape is really, really bad. At times, it's very, very yellowed. Oddly, it often went from very yellow to normal or even (briefly) black and white! The film really needed restoration and I hope the DVD version has been cleaned up quite a bit.

I like Otto Preminger's films, and I came across this channel surfing. River of No Return was watchable but somewhat of a disappointment of a disappointment at the same.

The scenery is glorious and the cinematography is lovely. The music is also a nice touch, and I liked the songs Monroe sang. Preminger directs decently, while Robert Mitchum has a good presence and Marilyn Monroe is beautiful and acts convincingly at least. However, the script creaks really badly, while the story is clumsily handled. I also thought the pace was rather sluggish, and some of the characters are uninteresting and lack credibility.

In conclusion, I guess it is a watchable movie but for fans of Preminger or Mitchum or Monroe while they all do adequate jobs they deserved better. 5/10 Bethany Cox