A River Runs Through It is a 1992 American drama film directed by Robert Redford and starring Craig Sheffer, Brad Pitt, Tom Skerritt, Brenda Blethyn, and Emily Lloyd. It is based on the 1976 semi-autobiographical novella A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean, adapted for the screen by Richard Friedenberg. Set in and around Missoula, Montana, the story follows two sons of a Presbyterian minister, one studious and the other rebellious, as they grow up and come of age in the Rocky Mountain region during a span of time from roughly World War I to the early days of the Great Depression, including part of the Prohibition era.

Plot

The Maclean brothers, Norman and Paul, grow up in Missoula, Montana, with their mother, Clara, and their father, Rev. John Maclean, a Presbyterian minister, from whom they learn a love of fly fishing for trout in the Blackfoot River. Norman and Paul are home-schooled under the strict moral and academic code of their father. Norman leaves to attend college at Dartmouth. When he returns six years later during the Prohibition era and the Jazz Age, he finds that Paul has become a highly skilled fisherman and a hard-drinking, fearless investigative journalist working for a newspaper in Helena.

Awards