The River (1984 film)

The River is a 1984 American Southern Gothic drama film directed by Mark Rydell and written by Robert Dillon and Julian Barry, who based the screenplay on actual stories of East Tennessee farmers who lost their crops due to damage caused by bad weather, and having to reluctantly work industrial jobs as strikebreakers in nearby cities to avoid foreclosure on their farmland. Starring Sissy Spacek, Mel Gibson (in his American film debut), and Scott Glenn, the film is set in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians countryside of East Tennessee where farm couple Tom and Mae Garvey, played by Spacek and Gibson, and their children struggle to operate their multi-generational family farm along the banks of a river prone to flooding destroying their crops, and a increasingly dire financial situation due to loan rejections and a risk of foreclosure. Their financial situation prompts Gibson's character to find work at a steel mill, unknowingly as a strikebreaker, leading to confrontations with striking millworkers. After surveying a flood event, land developer Joe Wade, played by Glenn, aggressively seeks to acquire farmland, including the Garvey farm, for a massive dam-based economic development project he is spearheading.