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Poster for River's Edge

River's Edge

1986 · Film · 100 min

Directed by Tim Hunter

CrimeDramaThriller

A group of high-school friends must come to terms with the fact that one of them, Samson, killed another, Jamie. Faced with the brutality of death, each must decide whether to turn their friend in to the police, or to help him escape the consequences of his dreadful deed.

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1 comment on Hacker News

  1. Negativelike_any_otherAug 28, 2025

    There's merit to your suspicions. For example, the 1996 movie A Time to Kill depicts a black father avenging the rape and attempted murder of his ten-year-old daughter by two white men, using it to depict the evils of white racism, and justifying vigilantism. The rape (but not the vigilantism) is based on a true event, when the author witnessed the "harrowing" court testimony of a 12 year old rape and assault victim, with two simplifications: there were two victims and one assailant, instead of two assailants and one victim, and the races were reversed: the perpetrator was black, and the victims were white: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_to_Kill_(Grisham_novel)#Inspiration

    Similarly, the film Bad Ass features an older Latino that beats up white skinheads that were harassing and threatening him. Based on a real event, where an older white man was being harassed and threatened by a black man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Ass_(film)

    The film River's Edge is about a boyfriend that kills his girlfriend, both white teens. Based on a real murder, but the perpetrator there was black: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River%27s_Edge

    The Netflix series Painkiller features a capable black woman lawyer that takes on the Purdue pharma in the opioid epidemic. The real lawyer was white: https://www.thepublica.com/netflix-accused-of-race-swapping-after-replacing-investigators-who-took-down-purdue-pharma-during-opioid-crisis-with-a-fictional-black-woman/

    In Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Nazis have free reign in Egypt, and the locals support and cheer for the British and Allies, to the point of breaking into song lauding British sailors. In reality, Egypt at that time was effectively under British occupation, which the Egyptians fiercely disliked, and hated the British (they would have a revolution against them in 1952).