River Runs Through It (Deluxe Edition) (1992)

USA Today
"...It's the best movie ever whose raison d'etre is the spiritual glorification of fly-fishing..." 10/09/1992 p.8D

Chicago Sun-Times
"...Poetic, elegiac....The movie was shot on locations that suggest the bounty of the Western states in those days..." 10/09/1992 p.41

Washington Post 7 of 10
A River Runs Through It carries you gently into the Montana of the past, where two brothers and their father indulge themselves in the transcendent passion of fly fishing. The Blackfoot River that runs through their lives also submerges intimate communication. This adaptation of the Norman Maclean novella, directed by Robert Redford, explores that haunting gulf of silence. Set between 1910 and 1935, the story's about central characters Craig Sheffer and Brad Pitt, who spend their days either at riverside or in church. Their father, Presbyterian minister Tom Skerritt, teaches them the art of catching trout and the ways of the Lord. "In our family," says narrator Redford, "there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing."... Sheffer and Pitt bring authentic presence to the movie. They seem sprung from the pages of an old Saturday Evening Post. Sheffer is a quiet, unassuming success; Pitt...is an engagingly flawed naif... Redford delivers reverent passage[s]... about fishing and unspoken feelings. The words -- taken directly from the book -- are beautifully cast, but they encapsulate the emotions too conveniently... But the movie conveys its sentiments with such unhurried effectiveness, these things just flow past. It doesn't hurt matters that the story's set in one of the world's most beautiful corners -- rendered in pre-twilight glows by cinematographer Philippe Rousselot. The setting all but transcends everything -- it gives heft to even the lightest moments among Sheffer, Pitt and Skerritt. One fishing day, when normally taciturn and humorless Skerritt hauls in the biggest catch of the group, he walks away from his quietly jealous sons saying, "I'd say the Lord has blessed us all today. It's just that He's been particularly good to me." - Desson Howe
 
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
Fly-fishing stands for life in this movie. If you can learn to do it correctly, to read the river and the fish and yourself, and to do what needs to be done without one wasted motion, you will have attained some of the grace and economy needed to live a good life. If you can do it and understand that the river, the fish and the whole world are God's gifts to use wisely, you will have gone the rest of the way... The movie stars Craig Sheffer as Norman, the older son, more serious, learning to write by taking his papers in to his father's study, invariably to be told, "Good. Now make it half as long." Brad Pitt is the younger brother, Paul, an impetuous, golden-haired free spirit who drinks too much and gets in card games, and wants nothing more than to stay in Montana all of his life, working for a newspaper. Norman has more serious aspirations; he wants to teach literature. But it is Paul who is the better fly fisherman, and who, at least one day, is perfect at what he did... This must have been a very difficult movie to write. It is not really about the events that happen in it. They are only illustrations for underlying principles. Leave out the principles, and all you have left are some interesting people who are born, grow up, and take various directions in life. Redford and his writer, Richard Friedenberg, understand that most of the events in any life are accidential or arbitrary, especially the crucial ones, and we can exercise little conscious control over our destinies. Instead, they understand that the Reverend Maclean's lessons were about how to behave no matter what life brings; about how to wade into the unpredictable stream and deal with whatever happens with grace, courage and honesty. It is the film's best achievement that it communicates that message with such feeling. - Roger Ebert