TV REVIEWS : Principal Sinks in ‘River of Rage’

In “River of Rage: The Taking of Maggie Keene” (at 9 p.m. Sunday on CBS, Channels 2 and 8), Victoria Principal spends almost as much time running for her life as Harrison Ford did in “The Fugitive.”

Unfortunately, nothing else in this ponderous TV movie will remind you of that gripping Hollywood blockbuster. “River of Rage” never generates the types of thrills and chills one would hope for in a movie about a woman being hunted down in the wild by a drug-dealing psychopath and his two henchmen.

Principal plays Maggie, a divorced and unadventurous mother who is talked into taking a rafting trip in Texas with her new boyfriend, Eric (David Beecroft). When Eric and a river guide are gunned down by the film’s crazed villain, Maggie is left scrambling to escape with the barest of survival skills.

Principal’s performance, however, is so wooden that empathizing with her besieged character is like climbing a very slippery slope. During several harrowing moments, Maggie’s fear barely manages to sneak to the surface.

As Maggie’s teen-age stepson, Sean Murray injects a much needed sense of humanity into the movie. But it isn’t enough to keep “River of Rage” from being an indisputable washout.