White Mile

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

Alan Alda realistically portrays an all too common tyrannical boss in this true to life adventure. Companies are self serving, and that combined with a self serving executive proves fatal for five men. Anyone who has worked under such conditions will immediately recognize the plight of only doing something, you obviously feel uncomfortable with, to please a boss. The ill-fated rafting trip exposes Alan Alda's character as manipulative, uncaring, and devoid of conscience. The white water expedition is really well done, and the viewer gets a good idea of just how quickly things can go terribly wrong. Highly recommended. - MERK

Look, this is a silly made for TV movie. It's mildly distracting and week bring a light smile at the B-grade script and plot.

The intensity of "White Mile" is somewhat surprising. Oh, I don't mean intensity in the way the DVD case will have you believe - all action and peril in the vein of "The Edge". In fact, the white water rafting is ultimately a very brief portion of the story. The stars of the film (Alan Alda and Peter Gallagher) offer up both very solid and very conflicted characters. At first, the depth is a unexpected thing. We aren't given basic sketches created simply to graft onto a script. Michael Butler has written this film as, essentially, a moral dilemma. In the end, it is so much devoted to this approach that we never quite get going in a fully emotional sense.

"White Mile" made me think. That's a good thing. It didn't particularly make me feel, but I'm okay with that. The acting was good, the direction adequate, and for something I went into without expectation, I can't say I'm disappointed. Good film.

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