‘The Girl in the River’ Review: Tiffany Haddish in Detective Thriller

“Business and feelings, they don’t go well in this line of work,” comments a veteran criminologist in the new thriller written and directed by Brando Benetton. It’s the sort of hackneyed observation made by jaded cops since they’ve first been portrayed onscreen, and it’s emblematic of the cornucopia of familiar elements in The Girl in the River. Depicting a murder/kidnapping investigation conducted by the older cop partnered with, you guessed it, a younger rookie colleague, this is a movie you’ll swear you’ve seen before.

Devon Sawa (Final Destination) plays the cop, Alan Kramer, whose constant furtive sips from his liquor flask instantly let us know that he’s deeply troubled — in this case by the death of his young son, whose photograph he carries around and periodically stares at plaintively. His new partner, Amelia Pembrock (Maggie Grace, the Taken movies), was the top-ranked cadet in her class, but her fear of actually going out in the field has led her to sabotage her own career.  

So naturally this mismatched pair is recruited by a tough-talking, small-town police captain (Tiffany Haddish, understated in a rare dramatic role) to investigate the murder of a teenage girl whose body was found in the Mississippi River and whose twin sister is missing. And in case we question the seriousness of the assignment, at one point the captain demands, “Close the case, no matter the cost!”

Kramer, who’s on the verge of retirement, doesn’t want to take the case but he changes his mind after talking to the victim’s father (veteran actor and B-movie producer Andrew Stevens, who handles both chores here), a local politician and very big deal in the very small town.

And so it goes, with the investigators working off such obscure clues as the victim’s teeth having been damaged post-mortem and raw chicken found under her fingernails. The latter leads to a prime suspect, a nebbishy local butcher who cares for his elderly mother and who seems exactly the type you’d think would murder a young girl. In an attempt to make the case against him, Pembrock commits a stunning act of illegality that would immediately have the case thrown out of court but at least provides the film a few moments of suspense.

Helping the cops is an affable coroner played by Ralph Macchio, whose ever-likable presence should help with the film’s streaming numbers.

The Girl in the River plays entirely by the book, by which I mean that there’s not a plot development you don’t expect, including the eventual reveal of the actual killer. (C’mon, you didn’t really think it was the butcher, did you?) The ensuing tense encounter includes one of the more unconvincing shootouts ever committed to film, although to be fair, two of the characters involved clearly have little prior experience.

Making his feature directorial debut, Benetton delivers reasonably effective atmospherics but remains hamstrung by his script that seems to have been written by AI. Burdened by clichéd plotting and dialogue, the sluggishly paced film at least benefits from its two leads, who undertake their assignments with professionalism. A grizzled and gaunt Sawa invests his character with haunted, intense physicality, while Grace proves appealing in her Clarice Starling-like role. But their efforts are not enough to prevent the film from feeling like a failed TV pilot from a past era.